


Renovations

by betts



Category: Frozen (Disney Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Anna and Elsa are Not Related (Disney), Christmas, Exhibitionism, F/F, F/M, Fluff, Forehead Kisses, Hurt/Comfort, Loss of Virginity, Multi, Neighbors, Polyamory, Slow Burn, Thanksgiving, Threesome - F/F/M, Touch-Starved, Voyeurism, and having an obscenely rich girlfriend, infidelity but it's complicated, the antagonist is late-stage capitalism, the cure is polyamorous love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-08
Updated: 2020-06-26
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:54:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 47,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21609346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betts/pseuds/betts
Summary: Kristoff took Elsa's ankle and started wrapping it tightly in a bandage. “You’ve got a black mold situation covered up with a shitty paint job, a broken water heater, a leaky roof, a furnace on its last legs, and that’s just what I caught in a few minutes.”She was surprised but not entirely put off by his minor trespass. She had, after all, passed out in his arms, bled all over his couch, and taken a major chunk out of his day. And now he was touching her again, and she never wanted him to stop.“You don’t even have a bed,” he said.Or: Elsa, a millionaire heiress, sells her family’s business and settles down in the Pacific Northwest beach town of Arendelle. Isolated in her run-down mansion, she immerses herself in the lives of her neighbors, a married couple who have fallen on hard times.
Relationships: Anna/Elsa (Disney), Anna/Elsa/Kristoff (Disney), Anna/Kristoff (Disney), Elsa/Kristoff (Disney)
Comments: 179
Kudos: 387





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know why I saw a Disney movie and thought "I'll use these characters to ideate a world in which polyamorous love can overcome the toxicity of capitalism" but I did and here we are. 
> 
> Anna and Elsa are not sisters in this. There are references and allusions to Frozen 2 but no spoilers, and you don't have to have seen it to understand what's going on. There's some infidelity and dishonesty present, but it's complicated.

**Renovation [re-nə-ˈvā-shən], noun:** the process of improving a broken, damaged, or outdated structure

* * *

Arendelle was a sleepy beach town with a population of a few thousand in summer, the tourist months, and almost no one in winter — shops and stores closed down, vacation homes sat abandoned, and you could look out at the beach for hours without seeing a single person. The season had just finished up when Elsa, in the most spontaneous decision she’d ever made, bought a beachfront property tucked in the far corner of town. It was an old building — the previous owners had clearly put a lot of care into the place, added multiple extensions, renovated a few rooms (though not well), and installed floor-to-ceiling windows to the west and south of the house, facing the ocean and town respectively. The sunset was what sold her, despite her realtor’s warning that the place had been dormant for years and needed a lot of work. She told him she had a lot of time, not understanding the magnitude of the necessary renovation.

The result of the prior tenants’ diligent, if somewhat misguided, work was labyrinthian and sprawling. The house sat atop a slope of cliffs, with a path of wooden planks that led down to the beach. It looked something like a castle, completely isolated from the town and therefore the world, which was exactly what she needed. She knew it was cowardice that drew her away from her responsibilities, but she could no longer tolerate her blight on humanity. In Arendelle, she had no obligations, and no one she could hurt.

Which also meant no one could help her, she realized just two weeks after she moved in, after locking herself out of the house.

She’d gone out to get the mail at the end of the driveway. Her phone was on the kitchen counter, her keys in the bowl by the door. She wasn’t wearing shoes, or even a jacket. Normally the cold didn’t bother her, but a chill had seeped into the tail end of October, and the sea breeze didn’t help. After berating herself internally for a handful of minutes, she decided self-loathing wasn’t going to solve anything, possibly the most mature thought she’d ever had, and set about climbing around the property looking for a loose window among the dozens that lined the house.

Half an hour later, she still hadn’t found a way back inside. She’d begun to shiver and tried to ignore it, but could barely feel her fingertips. To make matters worse, it was raining, a light drizzle that nonetheless had managed to soak her head to toe. The rocks to the north side of the house had grown slick, and once she had finally given up her search, on her way back to the front porch, she slipped and fell, twisting her ankle and scraping her shoulder on something sharp. As she lay on the cold wet ground, assessing the pain that slowly seeped through the brief burst of adrenaline, she allowed herself a cry — from the pain, she told herself, and not the unfortunate events that had led her to this point, her dead parents, their inheritance, her failure. She had sold her family’s business, the one that her great-grandfather had built from nothing, that her grandfather turned into a multi-million-dollar company, that was her father’s pride and joy and, ultimately, his downfall. And Elsa sold it because she hated it. Hated its insidious tendrils in every aspect of her life. Hated her father’s succession plan which placed it suddenly and wholly in her hands. Hated its unethical practices and its participation in the destruction of the world. Now she had to live with not only the effect of her legacy on climate change, but ruining the lives of its five hundred employees, whom the new corporate owners fired without notice when they moved operations overseas.

Mostly she cried in self-pity, and hated herself all the more for it. She was alone. Even if she had her phone there was not a single person she could call for help who would not charge her for their services. She prided herself on independence, had always seen it as a strength. Unlike other people, she did not require companionship to be happy. But, lying there in the rain, she realized she had never been happy.

She had no choice. Her options were to stay here until she froze to death, or get up and find help. Her ankle hurt too badly to walk the scant mile into town and ask to use a phone. She could probably only make it to her neighbor’s, but she abhorred the thought. Over the past two weeks, she hadn’t been spying on them, exactly, but, lacking an internet connection and TV, their life together had become her primary entertainment. Her house was up the hill a ways, so she could easily see into theirs, but they couldn’t well see into hers. As far as she could tell it was just the two of them, a young couple and their giant German shepherd. They wouldn’t have caught her attention at all if she hadn’t first seen them in the middle of a disagreement. The woman — small, auburn-haired, wearing a stylish suit and heels — was putting groceries away. The man — hulking, blonde, in a t-shirt and sweatpants — seemed to be pleading for something. The fight didn’t last long, only until the woman finished with the groceries. She hadn’t spoken a single word to him, and retired upstairs. A light had turned on in the corner room, and Elsa guiltily peered into the window. The woman curled up in bed, still fully clothed, shoes and all. She might have been crying. Meanwhile, the man put on a coat and took the dog for a walk. When he returned, he made himself a sandwich, and offered his crusts to the dog. Elsa was ashamed of how long she bore witness to their bad night, but it made her feel so much less alone. She’d never had a partner with whom to fight, never had a broken heart. She couldn’t imagine how hard that night must have been for them.

She had closed the blinds in hopes of deterring herself from further spying, but it didn’t work. The next morning she peeked in on them, and was elated to see the woman offer her husband a quick kiss goodbye before she left for work. It was cold and obligatory, but he grabbed her arm and kissed her again, a real one, and for a moment Elsa thought the woman would push him away, but she didn’t. She seemed to melt into him, and they spoke a few brief words — sweetly, with seemingly bemused smiles — and she left. Perhaps with any other loveless couple Elsa would have lost interest, but the tenderness they expressed to one another was undeniable. They loved each other in a way no one had ever loved her, and they had problems, probably big ones, but she believed just by their interactions those problems could be overcome, unlike Elsa’s, which had caused permanent and unforgivable damage to countless lives. 

And so she had spent the better part of two weeks watching the couple live their lives. The woman sometimes didn’t come home at night, but the man rarely left. He took the dog for long walks up and down the beach. He occasionally went to the bar down the road, but only for an hour or two at a time. He watched television sometimes but otherwise had no interaction with a cell phone or laptop. His truck was parked in the drive and it had a sign on the side but Elsa couldn’t make out what it said. The truck was still there as she limped down the hill to their house, which was much smaller and newer than her own. Shamefully she knew it was not time for the dog to go on a walk and so the man would be home. Finally she could read the sign on the truck: _ Arendelle Repairs, LLC. _

With difficulty she climbed the porch steps and did not allow herself even a second of doubt. She rang the doorbell. Suddenly she was dizzy. She touched the back of her shoulder and her fingers came away bloody. How much blood had she lost? Inside the dog barked only twice as if to inform the man the doorbell had rung. Heavy footsteps came toward the door. Blackness crept into her vision. She reached out to grasp something, but her hand found nothing. Just as the man opened the door, her knees gave out, and she fell unconscious.

* * *

A tongue lapped at her hand, and a big furry head bumped into her palm. Mindlessly she scratched behind the dog’s ears as she regained consciousness. When she reluctantly opened her eyes, she found herself draped across her neighbor’s couch. On the coffee table sat an enormous first aid kit, and in the kitchen she could hear the microwave running. Outside, the sea crashed against the cliffs. The house smelled like cedar and a fire was crackling in the fireplace. A muted football game played on TV.

She tried to sit up but her head shrieked in pain. The man returned with a Tupperware bowl and a cloth. 

“How long —” she began, but couldn’t shape the rest of the words.

“Two minutes, tops,” he said, and perched on the coffee table, which was a thick slab of lacquered wood. Pretty, she thought, though she wasn’t sure if it was directed at the table or the man who sat upon it.

“Did you call a —” She made a gesture in the air that she hoped resembled a spinning siren.

“You’re not dying and I don’t know your healthcare situation, so no.”

“Thank you.”

His voice was so much softer than she’d been anticipating, and he was somehow larger than he’d seemed from afar. “I know we just met but —” He nodded to her shoulder. “I need you to lift up your shirt.”

“It’s fine.” She sat up again. This time it was easier. The dog let out a barely audible whine as if to tell her to lie back down. “I just — if I could — borrow a phone. I need a locksmith.”

“Sorry, he’s busy helping a woman bleeding all over his couch.”

“You’re the locksmith?”

“And the plumber, electrician, roofer, handyman, and occasional AirBnB housekeeper.”

“That’s a lot of trades.”

“Jack of all, master of none.” 

Having been surrounded by businessmen with stacks of chips on their shoulders, she wasn’t sure she’d ever met a humble man. It might have been the concussion, or having spent the better part of two weeks watching him, but she was immediately endeared by him, and found herself leaning forward to tug up the back of her soaked shirt, careful to keep her chest covered, although she was still embarrassed he could see her bra. 

He settled behind her on the couch. His hands were warm as they gently prodded her wound. She couldn’t remember the last time anyone had touched her. The realtor, maybe, shaking her hand. But before that, months. And never as intimately as he was doing now, as if she were something fragile. 

“Not as bad as it looks,” the man said. “You don’t need stitches or anything.” He set about cleaning it. They were silent, and she was surprised how comfortable that silence felt. She winced as he dabbed the wound with iodine. “Sorry,” he muttered.

The dog rested his chin on her thigh. As the man carefully stuck a square of gauze on her shoulder, he said, “I’m Kristoff.”

“Elsa."

“You moved in next door.” It was a statement, not a question, and she sensed that despite his humility he didn’t have very refined social skills, which explained how infrequently he left the house.

“A couple weeks ago.”

“We thought you were squatting. Then we noticed the For Sale sign was gone and they canceled the open house. You didn’t have a U-Haul or anything.”

She was amused by his honesty — no one in her old life would have been so tactless — and embarrassed by his noticing her presence, but also complimented, that he had watched her closely enough to realize no moving truck had arrived.

“I didn’t bring much with me,” she said. She’d brought a few boxes of books and keepsakes, a couple suitcases of clothes. It all fit in her car. Before, she’d lived in a penthouse in the city, where she had an entire team of people that came and went, cleaning, cooking, delivering groceries, doing her laundry, keeping track of her calendar and shuffling her to board meetings or networking events. She felt so stupid to realize the furniture she’d seen in her new house had only been for staging, and she had to buy her own, which she hadn’t yet gotten around to. She’d gone out and bought a few basic kitchen supplies but had no idea how to use them. She’d been sleeping on an air mattress. 

“Why not?” he asked.

She almost laughed. They’d only just met and already he was expressing more interest in her than anyone in her memory ever had. In any other situation, she might be inclined to sidestep the question, but the house was warm; he was finished bandaging her but still touching her shoulder, his hand casually placed there as if he didn’t even notice. She wasn’t facing him, so it was easy to admit, “I’m starting new.”

He clapped her uninjured arm. “Well. You picked a really old-ass house to start new in.”

A laugh leapt from her throat. It shocked her.

“Ready to break into your own house?” he asked.

“Um,” she said nervously. “Sorry. My ankle.”

He knelt by the end of the couch to inspect it. She’d been avoiding looking until now, but it was in bad shape, bruised and swollen, covered in dirt, nearly blue from the cold. She was even embarrassed by her feet; it had been two weeks since her last pedicure.

He pursed his lips together as if thinking through a difficult puzzle. Then he took a throw pillow and slotted it under her leg. “I’m going to get you some of my wife’s clothes so you don’t freeze to death.” She opened her mouth to object, but he continued. “Then I’m going to get into your house, find your key, make a copy of it so this doesn’t happen again, and run into town for an ACE bandage.” 

“That’s too much, I —”

“Don’t have a choice. I’m the only locksmith in thirty miles, and I’m not going to let you back into your house otherwise.”

She found herself too tired to argue. He left, the dog trailing after him, and returned moments later with a stack of folded clothes.

“That’s still hot,” he said, gesturing to the cloth in the Tupperware bowl. “Put that on your ankle. It’ll help with the swelling. Remote’s beside you if you want to watch TV. And Sven here is trained to kill on command if you need him to.”

Sven had his back paw, in its entirety, in his mouth. 

Kristoff grabbed his jacket and moved to leave. 

“Wait,” Elsa said. He stopped and looked at her, the first time she’d allowed herself to make eye contact with him. His eyes were hazel, and she saw nothing but kindness behind them. She’d never trusted someone so quickly. “Thank you.”

He nodded his acknowledgement, seemingly made bashful by her sincerity, and left.

* * *

She awoke to the creak of the front door, the clatter of the keys on the counter. She was almost uncomfortably warm for the first time in weeks and the pain had gone away, but she knew if she moved even an inch it would come back. Kristoff’s wife’s clothes fit her well; the two of them were just about the same size but it was clear they had vastly different tastes. Elsa preferred neutral colors, leggings with flowy tops. Kristoff had given her a pair of yoga pants and a hot pink hoodie.

“Sorry to wake you,” Kristoff said, closer than she’d anticipated.

When she rolled over, she found him sitting on the coffee table again. She glanced at the clock — he'd been gone only an hour. It was just past seven now and already dark out. He gave her her phone, which she hadn’t remembered to ask for. In the hours she’d been gone, she hadn’t missed a single text or call. Her email had been at inbox zero for over a month. It was relieving at first, but now it made her feel adrift, purposeless. She had nothing to sign, no calendar invites to approve. Sometimes she found herself sifting through her spam folder for something to do.

“I have good news and bad news,” he said. “Good news is, I installed a box at the side of your house with an emergency key in it.” 

“And the bad news?”

“I saw the inside of your house.”

“And?”

“That’s it. That place is a nightmare. How do you live like that?”

With anyone else, she might have taken it as an insult, but Kristoff did not seem capable of genuinely judgmental thought. “It needs some work,” she admitted.

He took her ankle and started wrapping it tightly in a bandage. “You’ve got a black mold situation covered up with a shitty paint job, a broken water heater, a leaky roof, a furnace on its last legs, and that’s just what I caught in a few minutes.”

She was surprised but not entirely put off by his minor trespass. She had, after all, passed out in his arms, bled all over his couch, and taken a major chunk out of his day. And now he was touching her again, and she never wanted him to stop.

“You don’t even have a bed,” he said.

“You went into my room.”

“Excuse me for inspecting the structural integrity of your house. It’s not like there’s anything in it anyway.”

She had foregone the property appraisal in order to speed the buying process along, and now she was deeply regretting it. Despite her realtor’s protests, she hadn’t even negotiated the price. She saw the house, fell in love with the view, and signed the mortgage that afternoon, to the title company’s chagrin, who had to expedite all the documentation. She probably wasted hundreds of thousands of dollars, which was upsetting not because she’d spent too much money, but because it didn’t make a dent in her fortune at all.

“You don’t seem like a serial killer or anything,” he said, "so why don’t I fix you something to eat, and you can stay here tonight. We have a guest room you can use. With a real bed.”

“I really can’t.”

“Why not?”

She’d been expecting him to fight her on it, not ask directly why she declined his offer. Again she found herself waylaid by his bluntness. 

“I,” she began, but couldn’t think of a single lie. She obviously couldn’t walk. She had no job and no friends or family. He’d already seen her house to know she didn’t have any thriving or pertinent hobbies to attend to. 

“That’s what I thought,” he said, standing. “You like burgers?”

* * *

He offered her a beer, and she surprised herself by accepting it. She didn’t even like beer, but this one was light, a craft brand, and she found herself enjoying it the more she drank of it. She ate propped up on the couch, him from a tray table in front of a recliner. The burger was excellent — they both liked them rare, and he said he’d made the buns himself, and spoke for a long time and with off-putting fondness about his sourdough starter. The vegetables were sliced thickly and the fries had been baked in the oven. He’d made it all look effortless, less than half an hour of work, but she’d never cooked herself such a meal. It seemed like an impossible feat.

They talked a little about nothing in particular, and finally she got up the courage to ask where his wife was. 

“Southern Isles,” he said casually. “She travels for work.”

Elsa was simultaneously relieved and disappointed. She hadn’t realized her assumption was that his wife had been cheating on him. Then again, maybe she was and he didn’t know.

“What does she do?”

“She’s in pharmaceuticals. Consulting.”

That explained how they owned a beachfront house on a handyman’s income. 

“What about you?” Kristoff asked. His averted eyes told her he was extremely curious but hesitant to ask. Surely he had seen the listing price on the house. She imagined how she likely looked from his perspective — a single woman in her thirties, living in a run-down mansion on the beach, who owned nothing. He probably had no idea what to make of her, which was fair, because she often didn’t know what to make of herself.

“I’m between things,” she said, which wasn’t strictly speaking true. She had no intention of finding a new job. The dividends from her investments paid her living expenses, and she had a private wealth manager who handled her portfolio. Her accountant did everything else. She had so much money that money didn’t matter to her, a situation she only recently realized was an exceptional rarity in the world.

“So you’re unemployed,” he said.

It was a surprisingly complicated question in a country that legally saw businesses as people. Technically, having owned the company, she _ was _the company, and had therefore never been employed by it. So to say she was unemployed while still living on said company’s profits also was not entirely true.

“For now.”

“Where did you work before?”

She took a long gulp of beer and wondered how she might dodge the question without seeming rude, but she couldn’t without coming off as even more enigmatic, and she would hate to make herself seem standoffish, when she was in fact eager for his company. Then again, the truth might appall him. 

“Fjord,” she said.

“Fjord Lumber?”

She nodded.

“What did you do?”

She should lie, say she was a foreman or come up with some bland-sounding job title, but he was so honest, and so kind, she found it difficult to deceive him. “I owned it.”

“Owned wha—” He lowered his cheeseburger as he processed her admittance. She noticed a spot of mustard on his chin, and also that his chin was very cute. “You owned it. The biggest lumber company in the world. You’re Elsa Fjord.”

“That’s me.”

“You’re like, a billionaire.”

“Not quite.”

“A millionaire.”

“Yep.”

“And you _ sold _it. To Weselton! It was all over the news for like, a week.”

It had been a very bad week, and she'd declined all the interviews requested of her. Perhaps if she had taken them, Kristoff would have recognized her as she had fainted on him. 

“Oh man, I’m sorry about your parents,” he said, grimacing.

She’d owned the company for only six years, having acquired it after her parents died in a car accident. Her mother was mortally afraid of flying, and insisted on driving when at all possible. A semi had cut them off, and their car slid down a ravine. Elsa had expected someone to accuse her of murdering them, but people cared far less about corporate lumber politics than she expected, and she continued living in relative obscurity, insofar as her name had never been a trending hashtag, the _ Times _hadn’t gotten around to featuring her, and annual 40 Under 40 lists never gained much traction.

Normally when people offered their consolation, she accepted it with grace. But, tipsy on beer and basking in the easy presence of Kristoff, whose attitude toward her had not visibly changed upon learning of her infamy, all she could muster was, “Yeah. It sucked.”

She could tell he wanted to ask more, and could sense a hundred questions on his tongue, as she too fought not to ask all the questions that had accumulated over the past two weeks of watching him. It almost felt like dining with a celebrity, which she was sure he now felt in turn. Still, they remained silent, Kristoff watching the muted football game — what she thought was a different one than before, based on the colors of the uniforms — and slipping Sven scraps from his plate.

* * *

Kristoff baked a pan of double-fudge brownies. By then she’d drunk three beers and the pain had gone away so she was feeling very loose and may have teared up a bit as he handed her a brownie sundae, complete with rapidly melting vanilla ice cream, hot fudge, whipped cream, and a cherry. If he noticed, he said nothing. They watched a sitcom called _ Parks and Recreation _which she had never heard of but enjoyed immensely, even after Kristoff explained that it wasn’t actually a reality show. She wasn’t aware she had nodded off until he woke her with a soft shake of her shoulder.

“I’m heading to bed. Let me show you the guest room.” 

He helped her stand, her hand in his. She tried to take a step on her bad ankle, yelped in pain, and fell against him. She had been unconscious the last time it happened, and could now appreciate the solidity of his body, like a very warm wall. In his frumpy clothes she had taken him for somewhat chubby, but could now clearly feel the mass of muscle that lay under his ugly knit sweater. 

“Okay, don’t be weird about this,” he said, and before she could object, bent down and swept her up at the knees. 

She had never felt so undignified, his pushy chivalry like something out of an Austen novel. “Put me down.”

He headed for the stairwell. Sven followed. “No.”

“I’m serious.”

“What are you going to do about it? Fight me?”

“Maybe.”

“Go for it.”

But she was very tired, and after two weeks of sleeping on a semi-deflated air mattress, all she wanted was a real bed. So she relented, and he carried her up the stairs as if she weighed nothing. In the hallway she glimpsed dozens of framed photos on the walls, many of them wedding pictures, and saw the woman’s face for the first time — round, with green eyes and a bright smile. She was beautiful just like her husband. In the photos, a younger, slightly thinner Kristoff looked very uncomfortable in a suit and tie, with his hair shorter and combed neatly. His wife was tiny beside him. Elsa wondered what she would think of her husband carrying another woman to bed.

The guest room was barely larger than Elsa’s penthouse closet. It was simply decorated, modern, with a navy blue duvet and matching drapes. He lay her on the bed and helped her slide under the covers.

“I usually wake up pretty early," he said.

“I know,” she muttered sleepily, and instantly realized what she had said. “I mean, you seem like a morning person.”

To her relief, he only snorted a laugh. “Goodnight, your Highness.”

“Goodnight, Kristoff,” she said, secretly pleased. Normally people were too intimidated to tease her, but Kristoff was the first person she had met in years over whom she did not hold any authority.

He hesitated at the door, his hand on the light switch. “I had fun today.”

It was hard to believe a day that involved ample blood loss, a sprained ankle, and running errands for a helpless millionaire was what he considered fun, but, once the painful part was over, it had been fun for her too. 

“Me too,” she said. “Thank you for everything.”

He flipped off the light. “Any time.”


	2. Chapter 2

The next morning brought very good breakfast smells into the room. Elsa lay in bed and listened to Kristoff talking to someone, and worried momentarily it was his wife, until she realized he was talking to Sven, and also talking back to himself, as Sven, in a stupid voice. She was so enamored of him she could hardly bear it.

Her ankle seemed to be faring much better today, insofar that she could put some weight on it, enough to make it out of the room by herself. The bathroom was small, tucked into a corner, and goldfish-themed. Her clothes from yesterday were folded neatly on top of the toilet tank, freshly laundered. She changed back into them, sad to be back in her own outfit when Kristoff’s wife’s had been so comfortable.

She looked at her reflection and thought about how ugly she was without makeup, and even though Kristoff did not seem like the kind of man who would care about such things, she wished she could be pretty for him, and moreover that they had met under different circumstances. Then she felt disgusted with herself, not only for picking up an immediate crush on a married man, but for being shallow and a bad feminist. She combed her fingers through her hair and put it into bun, then noticed a toothbrush still in its packaging waiting for her on the counter — frosted blue, the color of her sweater. 

It was all too much. Kristoff had shown her more kindness and consideration in a single day than anyone had in years. She wished she could express how much it meant to her, but all she had was money, and she already knew he was too good a man to accept it. As she brushed her teeth she began to cry, and the harder she forced it down, the more insistent it became. She finished brushing, and wiped her face off on the clean towel he had left out for her which was also frosted blue, and that was it. She sat on the closed toilet lid and wept. 

A soft knock on the door. “Hey,” Kristoff said. “Are you okay?”

She took in a shaking breath and balled her hands into fists. In her most professional voice, she said, “I’m fine, thank you.” But she didn’t hear his footsteps recede, and a second later, the door creaked open and he poked his head inside. She almost laughed — here was a man who had no boundaries at all, up against a woman whose boundaries stood rigid and high.

“Are you hurt?” he asked.

“No,” she said, and wrapped some toilet paper around her hand to dab at her eyes. “I’m just —” but she couldn’t finish because one more word would send her into another fit.

Kristoff opened the door the rest of the way. Sven pushed past him and jumped onto Elsa’s lap and started licking her face. 

“Get down.” Kristoff tugged Sven’s collar, dragged him out of the bathroom, and shut the door. “Sorry. He can be very emotional.”

“It’s okay. I like that about him.”

A beat of silence passed between them in which she concentrated on breathing, and Kristoff seemed to be realizing he was in the presence of the Fjord Lumber heiress, who happened to be in midst of a mild breakdown in his crowded upstairs bathroom. 

“My wife would tell you I’m not very good at talking about, like, feelings and stuff,” he began. “But I give good hugs. If you, uh, want one. If that would help, I mean.”

She nodded and stood, lifted her arms, and he stepped into her embrace. He was right; he was an exceptional hugger, not just because of his size and warmth, but because of the earnestness behind the gesture, which nearly sent her crying again. He smelled good, too, like shampoo and laundry detergent his wife probably picked out, and his t-shirt was the softest cotton. 

They held each other for a long moment, and she sensed he was as reluctant to let go as she was. He kept his hand on her waist as he pulled away, seemingly without thinking, and said, “Are you hungry? I didn’t know what you liked for breakfast so I made everything.”

* * *

He really had made everything: regular _ and _ decaf coffee, pancakes _ and _ waffles, sausage links _ and _ patties, hash browns _ and _home fries. There was also bacon, and he offered her the options of an omelette, scrambled eggs, or fried eggs, which she declined because there was more food than she could possibly eat.

“When does your wife get home?” she asked. They were eating at the kitchen counter on barstools. She was already on her second cup of coffee.

He glanced at the refrigerator, on which was a magnetized dry-erase calendar. An arrow was drawn across the entire week. 

“Sunday,” he said forlornly. 

“Do you miss her?” she ventured, feigning nonchalance as she nibbled at a piece of bacon.

He shrugged one beefy shoulder. “I’m used to it.”

Based on what Elsa had seen, on the rare occasion Kristoff’s wife was home, they didn’t spend much time together. She was always out running errands, or going to the gym, or on her laptop. They came back together for a brief dinner and sometimes watched TV, him on the recliner with a beer in hand, her on the couch, occupied by her phone. 

Were the situation reversed, she was sure Kristoff would have prompted her to continue, but her sense of etiquette was too ingrained, and she let the subject drop. 

“What are your plans today?” she asked.

“Hopefully taking this girl I just met to the doctor. You know, make sure her leg’s not broken.”

It was her left foot, not her right, so she could easily drive herself, but she was reluctant to return to her solitude. 

“Sounds boring,” she said, pouring yet more syrup onto her short stack.

“Nah, she’s the most interesting person I’ve met in a long time.”

A flush rose on his face, which he tried to hide by taking his empty plate to the sink, but the back of his neck was red, too. She allowed herself an ounce of smug delight, until she remembered he was married, and surely flirting was forbidden, if that was in fact what was happening. She wouldn’t know; no one had ever flirted with her. Maybe he was only friend-flirting, if such a thing existed. She considered, too, that his extended kindness might be because he liked her, and had anyone else fainted on his porch, he may not have offered the same treatment. The thought made her feel special.

“Only if you let me pay you for gas,” she said. “And your locksmithing services.”

“No way.” He slid his plate onto the rack. “Exceptional circumstances. No charge.”

“Don’t locksmiths only work under exceptional circumstances?”

“Clients don’t usually pass out on my doorstep. Most of them use the phone.”

“At least let me reimburse you for what you bought.”

He dried his wet hands on a towel and sighed. “Fine, but only because it’s what my wife would say. Don’t judge me for her financial practicality.”

* * *

The x-ray determined nothing was broken and the scrape on her shoulder was healing just fine, but her ankle was badly sprained and she had a mild concussion. The doctor fitted her for a set of crutches. Kristoff stayed in the waiting room, and when she was done, helped her into the truck. He asked if she wanted to pick up something to eat. At first she wondered how he could still be hungry after so much breakfast, until she realized he was stalling, and agreed to go to the single remaining open cafe in town for coffee and pastries. The baker knew Kristoff and they had a bit of a chat in which Kristoff asked how the place was holding up, and the baker said it was fine, Kristoff had done a great job, and so on, until Elsa got tired of standing and hobbled to a small corner table. Kristoff brought her coffee, but before he could sit down, he ran into someone else he knew, and they chatted for a long time, too. It was fifteen minutes before he finally took a seat and said, “Sorry about that.”

“You’re pretty popular around here.”

“That's what happens when you fix everyone’s shit when it breaks.”

It was a dreary day, grey-skied and windy with an occasional drizzle of rain. Elsa watched out the window at the deserted street and wondered what Arendelle looked like in summer. Unbidden, Kristoff’s wife came to mind, the happy, carefree girl from the photos, not the sullen women chained to her computer that Elsa had seen from her window. 

“How did you and your wife meet?” Elsa asked.

“It’s not really a story.” Kristoff blew the steam off his coffee. “High school sweethearts. Then she left for college and we agreed to be friends, but we were miserable without each other. I thought she’d graduate and move to New York or something, find someone else, but she came back.”

“To be with you?”

He looked shy to admit it. “I guess, yeah.”

“You guess?”

“We’re not really feelings-talkers. We’ve been together so long, we don’t really need to.”

Elsa was grateful for years of training her face into complacency, because her eyebrows wanted to float incredulously up her forehead.

“Anyway,” Kristoff continued, “we got married. End of story. Happily ever after and all that.”

“I don’t mean to overstep, but you don’t sound very happy.”

He gave her a sharp look. “That is overstepping.”

So he did have a boundary. At once she was glad to see him capable of reservation, and also painfully curious. His face softened. “Sorry. I’m good at helping people. Not used to the other way around.”

“It’s okay. We don’t have to talk about her.”

After a brief silence, Kristoff asked how the sale of the house had gone, and conversation came more easily. The house was Elsa’s entire life, so she was happy to talk about it with someone who seemed invested. They talked until the cafe closed in the early afternoon, and neither of them could think of anything else to do, so Kristoff dropped Elsa off at her house and walked her to her door.

“Thanks again,” she said.

Kristoff opened his arms for a hug, which she accepted. It felt as though the magical, tenuous bond they’d built was rapidly dissipating. He said goodbye and headed back to his truck, and Elsa went to open the door but found it locked.

“Kristoff?” she said. 

He turned around, hopeful.

“Keys?”

“Oh shit,” he said, and pulled them out of his pocket. “Sorry.”

She took them. “Okay, well. I’ll see you around.”

“Yeah,” he said. “See you.”

She watched him return to his truck, and went inside.

* * *

The furnace really was on the fritz. Sometimes it heated the house but mostly it didn’t, and couldn’t keep up with the cold front that swept through Arendelle over the next few days. She had never minded cold showers, but coupled with the furnace issues, the situation became untenable. She was less depressed, though, and made a few phone calls to get the ball rolling on the renovations. Just months prior she’d had a personal assistant, Gwen, who did everything for her, and she was tempted to call and offer her a job, but the gesture would be too little too late. The assistants had lost their jobs along with everyone else, and Elsa was sure Gwen did not want to hear from her. Moreover, without renovations, Elsa had nothing to do. 

She tried to stop watching Kristoff, especially now that she knew him, but that only made it harder. She found herself having imaginary conversations with him, mostly about the house and what she wanted to do with it, but also about his wife, the mysterious beautiful pharmaceutical consultant with whom he shared his strange beach-hermit life. 

Mrs. Kristoff came home Sunday evening. Elsa watched Kristoff meet her outside, where he took her bags from the trunk. She drove a modest sedan. They didn’t hug or even seem pleased to see one another, but they were talking — rather, she was — as Kristoff continued unloading her car. When they got inside, she went through the mail on the kitchen counter and picked at the plate of food Kristoff had left out for her. He was leaning against the sink, staring into space as if in deep thought. Then he looked up, straight into Elsa’s window. She dove quickly out of sight. There was no way he’d seen her, she thought. All her lights were out. The house was too high up, and she’d been huddled on the floor in a blanket. She must have imagined it.

Her heart was pounding as she peered around the wall out the window again. Kristoff was standing behind his wife, his arms wrapped around her, kissing her neck. She didn’t seem to notice, so enrapt was she in leafing through a coupon insert. He spun her around and kissed her, and she seemed to humor him only briefly before pushing him away. Elsa was sure his wife was telling him how tired she was, how she’d been traveling all day, what had gotten into him?

Then he said something in her ear — what, Elsa couldn’t imagine — and his wife looked down and away, smiling, and he proceeded to kiss her neck, push her jacket off her shoulders, and this time she allowed it. Elsa could see his hand slide between his wife’s legs, up her tight pencil skirt, and that was enough. Elsa turned away, her back to solid drywall. She’d already committed so much evil in the world; if she spied on her married neighbors having sex, that would be it for her, there would be no going back. She didn’t believe in hell, but she knew her fate after death surely would not be a good one.

And yet, she was weak. One more look, she told herself. Now Kristoff was lifting his wife onto the countertop, her skirt bunched around her hips, and knelt in front of her. He began eating her out right there in the kitchen, all the lights on and windows open. Her hand was threaded in his hair, her head thrown back. Elsa couldn’t look away. It didn’t seem to take long at all before she was coming, her entire body shaking. Kristoff rose up and kissed her. Elsa saw him fumbling with his belt, and a moment later it was clear he was sliding into her. His wife’s legs were wrapped around his hips, and she tugged at the hem of his shirt and lifted it off him. He was as wide and solid as he’d felt, and Elsa found herself wishing the wife’s blouse would come off next, but it didn’t. He lowered her off the counter, turned her around, and sank into her from behind, not at all the socially awkward handyman she’d met days ago, but confident, touching his wife with the easy intimacy of two people who had done this thousands of times before.

Elsa realized belatedly that she was turned on, more so than she’d maybe ever been. She masturbated only rarely, usually in the shower using the detachable shower head. It was a clinical ordeal, bodily maintenance only, like flossing or getting her split ends cut. She didn’t like thinking about sex, mostly because she’d never had it and never sought it out. She’d never even been kissed, a fact she grew more ashamed of the older she got. Now, she avoided dating because she didn’t want to divulge how inexperienced she was. 

Kristoff was not rough with his wife, but neither was he as gentle as Elsa had imagined, not that she’d imagined him in sexual scenarios but — she’d made assumptions. Ones she now saw were glaringly incorrect. She found herself watching Mrs. Kristoff more intently than her husband. Elsa could see the woman’s mouth moving as if speaking, and wished she could read lips. Her face was twisted in pleasure. At some point her blouse had come unbuttoned and Elsa could see the tops of her breasts over her plain white bra, an expanse of soft, pink skin. 

In their days apart, Elsa’s fixation on Kristoff had only grown more intense, and she felt like a little girl again, getting crushes on the characters in her books — something for her alone to feel, impossible to be requited. She expected jealousy when his wife came home, and then to feel guilty for that jealousy, but she was surprised to find that she wasn’t jealous at all, not of Mrs. Kristoff anyway. She was a vague manner of envy, wishing she could be involved in something that, to them, was so easy, but to her so far-off, almost impossible. No one would ever touch her the way Kristoff and his wife touched each other.

She didn’t want to watch the end, or what would come after. The haze of pleasure. Pillow-talk, sans pillows. Maybe they’d go to bed together and continue there. Maybe they’d get into another fight. It didn’t matter; Elsa limped up to her air mattress in her chilly bedroom, and went to bed.

* * *

The next day, she was waiting for the cable technician to arrive and install internet — her spotty-at-best LTE signal was driving her to the brink of madness — when there was a knock at the door, three hours earlier than they had said they would arrive. When she opened the door, Kristoff was standing there, a round loaf of bread in hand. “Made too much bread,” he said in lieu of hello. “I figured, you know, everyone could use more bread. Even almost-billionaires.”

Despite the innocence of the gesture, the memory of him bending his wife over the counter on which he probably made that bread instantly sprang to Elsa’s mind. Her politeness was thus slow to click into place, but eventually she managed a “that’s so kind of you, thank you, would you like to come in?”

He stepped inside. “Jesus. It’s freezing in here.”

“I’m working on it. May I take your coat?”

He gave her a doubtful look, and she was grateful the familiarity of their last interaction had transferred to this one. “And put it where?”

“Rude.”

“Honest.”

She held out her hand to take his coat, and he took it off and passed it over. Initially she had intended to hang it in the closet, where she really did have a few hangers, but, feeling daring, decided to put it on. It was an enormous brown leather thing which engulfed her, still warm.

“Thank you,” she said. 

He snorted in amusement. “Rude.”

“An opportunist,” she said, pushing her sleeves up and tearing off a hunk of bread. “You could always fix the furnace.” 

He hesitated. “Really thought I’d have to argue you down.”

She stopped chewing. “What,” she said, mouth full of bread, forgetting her manners entirely.

“I was just wondering, you know, if I could help with —” He made a vague hand gesture around the house. “That’s why I came over. And the bread. And to see you. I mean, see how your ankle was doing.”

She was both stunned and flattered, and feared she was blushing. It was a good excuse to see more of him, and consistently, too. And it was certainly less conspicuous than coming over to his house just to hang out, or whatever it was friends did. She also feared that they didn’t have much in common, and fixing the house might give them something to start from, a shared interest. 

But her sense of propriety would not in good conscience allow him to work for her for free. One of the few things she’d prided herself on as a business owner was that every employee of Fjord Lumber and its contracted affiliates earned a living wage with benefits. Before she gave up, she had been so close to changing things for the better. She’d increased annual bonuses by slashing her own salary, lengthened maternal leave to six months, and initiated paternal leave for the same duration. Theirs was one of the few companies that still offered a pension. They hadn’t had a union dispute in decades. It gave her an intense pang of remorse to think she had destroyed all that progress because she could not achieve perfection.

“I would like that,” she said, “but surely you have other clients.”

“It’s October. After the summer rush but before the pipes freeze. I’m bored, okay.”

“You have to let me pay you.”

“Friends don’t let friends pay for professional services rendered in friendliness.”

She had suspected he wanted to be friends, but hadn’t anticipated he already thought of her that way. 

“Then put me in touch with your wife, and I’ll pay her,” she offered.

“No,” he said quickly, then more casually, “I mean, we don’t need to get her involved. She doesn’t like when I work for free.”

“I wonder why.”

He pulled something out of his back pocket. It was a piece of yellow legal paper, folded into fourths. He unfolded it and smoothed it out on the counter. His handwriting was in all caps, slanted to the right, with smears of ink across the page and a single coffee ring stain on the corner. He stood next to her, his shoulder touching hers, and pointed to the page, the top of which read, ELSA’S HOUSE RENNOVATION PLAN. The misspelling amused her.

He went down the list, which included a few items he hadn’t mentioned the day she locked herself out of the house (ANCIENT A/C UNIT, DEAD BIRD IN IT??), which meant he’d snooped around outside in the intervening days. Beside each item he’d listed the time it would take and its range of cost in parts only. In the margin, some items had a plus sign.

“What does that mean?” she asked. 

“It means I can’t do it alone, so I can hire one of my guys to help, or I _ guess _you can hire someone else, but they’re going to swindle you, and wonder why you didn’t hire me, and word will get around that the former Fjord queen won’t hire the best repairman in town who happens to be her neighbor, and I’ll probably lose like, a ton of business, so it’s better for everyone to just hire me.”

She stared at him. “You’re incorrigible.”

“I have no idea what that means.”

“Give me a pen, please.” She held out her hand. He pulled one out of his pocket and placed it in her palm. She quickly tallied up the cost of the highest figure on each item, plus the hours. Then she multiplied that figure by what she thought he deserved hourly (plus some for his guys), added it to the part cost, and at the top of the page, wrote the total figure she wanted to pay him, rounded up to the nearest thousand. “That’s what I will pay you. No less.”

He took the pen from her and wrote a figure below it, almost ten thousand dollars less. “That’ll cover my guys.”

“You’re a terrible businessman.”

“My wife would not disagree.”

“If I pay you that much, I'll Venmo your wife ten grand right now to make up the difference.”

“You wouldn’t. That’s way more than I normally charge even my most asshole-ish clients.”

She plucked her phone from the counter. “What’s her email? Don’t worry, I’ll find it.”

“Fine,” he said. “But I won’t be happy about it.”

She turned the paper over and wrote the figure they’d agreed on, and signed and dated below it. She handed the pen to him, and he signed too. Then she held out her hand for him to shake, and he took it. 

“You’re so nice, sometimes I forget you’re a cunning businessperson,” he said. 

“I can say the same to you. You just negotiated me way higher than I would have paid anyone else.”

He looked at her with disbelief, which fell quickly into a pout. He tried and failed to say something, gave up, and walked out of the house. For a moment she thought she’d mortally offended him with her teasing. 

“Where are you going?” she called from the door.

He was already halfway to his house. “Getting my toolbox,” he called back.

* * *

The day had gone smoothly and productively. The house had internet finally, and Kristoff had spent much of his time making calls to schedule his “guys” over the span of the project, and performed what appeared to be an extremely thorough inspection of the house. The roof was the first item on the list once the weather kicked up a few degrees, so her ceiling wouldn’t cave in over winter.

Elsa knew that Mrs. Kristoff, who had a very long daily commute, would be home a little before seven, and Kristoff would be leaving shortly before that to start dinner. It had taken the entire day for Elsa to work up the courage to ask what she needed to ask. He was at the sink, washing the grime off his hands in freezing cold water, which he complained about, loudly.

“Before you go,” she began, “would you be willing to change my bandage?”

She couldn’t reach the scrape on her shoulder to redress it herself. It felt so pathetic, not knowing a single person besides her neighbor who could help her with something like this. There were only a few things she couldn’t do by herself, and most of them involved what she couldn’t reach. To avoid dresses with zippers up the back, she often had the designer remake it with a zipper up the side.

He followed her to the bathroom. This time he seemed to have no compunction against lifting her shirt. She held the hem up at her shoulders, less embarrassed about her bra this time. It was a fancy, lacy one, which she told herself was just a coincidence. The doctor at urgent care had used a bigger bandage, this one tucked beneath the strap of her bra, so Kristoff had to lower it off her shoulder to take the bandage off. He was just as gentle as before, and she couldn’t help recalling the assertiveness with which he’d touched his wife. His hands were cold for once, and she could feel goosebumps erupt over her skin as he touched her, but he was polite enough not to say anything about it. She could see him and herself in the reflection of the mirror. 

The adhesive stung as he pried it from her skin, and he took his time inspecting the wound. Shamefully she savored his touch. She looked for some sign of mutual desire on his face, but he worked on her shoulder the way he’d worked on the rest of the house — neutrally, another job to be done.

“Looks good. Better,” he said, but she wanted to believe his voice was thicker than before. At this point she believed herself to be mad, and as her father often told her, reading too far into things. “Don’t think you need another bandage.”

“Okay, thanks.”

He glanced at her in the mirror, his hands still on her back, eyes locked on hers as he ran his knuckles gently down the length of her spine. They were standing so similarly to the position in which he’d had his wife just yesterday. Elsa was no mind-reader, but she was certain he was thinking about it, probably missing his wife far more than he let on. 

He cleared his throat and stepped away, and Elsa righted her bra and lowered her shirt. “Thank you.”

“No problem,” he said, pointedly avoiding her gaze as he walked backward out of the bathroom. “See you in the morning?”

“Sure,” she said, and he was gone.


	3. Chapter 3

They picked up an easy routine. Kristoff saw his wife off each morning at six. He walked the dog, prepared for the day, and then, by eight, came up the slope to Elsa’s house with breakfast in hand for both of them. They drank coffee and ate and watched the sky brighten over the ocean, getting weaker as October bled into November, each day growing darker, cloudier, and colder. They worked until noon, sometimes together and sometimes apart, and then ate lunch, usually just sandwiches, or leftovers from the bakery. Sometimes they fell into such deep conversation they didn’t get back to work until two or three in the afternoon. For someone who believed he was not much of a talker, Kristoff was an excellent conversationalist, filled with insightful questions and entertaining anecdotes, and probably the most engaged listener she’d ever met. She’d hoped her crush was merely wrapped up in the newness and mystery of him, but the more comfortable she grew around him, and the more he unveiled about himself, the worse her fixation got, until she began to wonder if it weren’t a fixation at all but genuine feelings, ones she’d never felt for anyone before. Ones that, before Kristoff came into her life, she believed to be fiction.

Like a good husband, he kept his distance. They didn’t hug hello or goodbye. There was no more unnecessary touching. The flirting continued, but she took it for what it really was: friendly teasing, affection, an easy rapport. She had learned quickly that Kristoff was a man who compartmentalized thoroughly, and he did not like talking about his wife. They seemed to talk about everything else in the world, though — politics, religion, philosophy, all topics she’d been taught not to bring up in polite company — and he respected her opinions, even if sometimes he disagreed. Rarely did they discuss themselves or their personal lives. Elsa knew he was curious about her past at Fjord, but she had her taboo topic just as he had his. 

Kristoff left every night by six to start dinner for his wife. Elsa had given up pretending to take the high road, and indulged herself by watching them, sometimes checking in just once or twice, sometimes for hours on end. Sex in the kitchen had apparently been an anomaly. If they’d had sex again after that, it must have been in their bedroom behind closed curtains, which relieved her as much as it frustrated her. 

He didn’t come over on weekends, and his wife had no more overnight business trips. As the house became more inhabitable, and Elsa got used to her occupation-less life, her isolation grew slightly more bearable. Her ankle had healed quickly, and she’d taken to going on runs at night on the beach, which Kristoff thought was crazy, but she liked the cold air filling her lungs after a long, hard day of keeping her hands off a married man.

Elsa was on her laptop in the kitchen picking out tile options when Kristoff’s phone rang. She’d been surprised to find he did have a cell phone, but unsurprised that it was a flip phone he usually carried in a belt clip like an old man. Now it was vibrating on her counter. The contact name read _ Anna_. 

Finally, a name, if it were in fact his wife. Elsa found him in one of the spare rooms replacing the water-damaged ceiling. 

“You have a call,” she said, and held the phone up to him. 

He didn’t bother climbing down from the ladder or even stopping what he was doing. He flipped open the phone and perched it on his shoulder. “Hey babe.”

Elsa left, but she didn’t go far, and listened guiltily from the hallway. For once there were no power tools whirring about. He said a lot of “uh huh”s between long pauses in which she could hear the hint of a woman’s rapid-fire voice. 

“That’s bullshit,” he said, but there was no heat behind it. Commiseration, then, not anger. “Okay, well. I mean it is what it is.” Another pause. “Okay, love you. Bye.”

It was anticlimactic. She didn’t move fast enough, and suddenly Kristoff was coming out of the room and almost ran into her. If he noticed she’d been listening in, he gave no indication. 

“My wife has to go to China,” he said. “For like, three weeks.”

“When?”

“She’s on her way home now to pack, and we leave at three a.m. for the airport. Would you mind taking Sven out in the morning?”

“Sure.”

He ran a hand down his face. “This really sucks.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I hate her job. She hates her job. I don’t know why she doesn’t just quit. Like, how are you supposed to have a marriage with someone who’s never home? And when she is home, she’s just this, like, Instagram zombie. That’s all she has energy to do, scroll through shit on her phone.”

Elsa had no idea what to say. Her immediate instinct was to offer as much money as they needed so Anna could quit her job and they could be happy again, but she knew Kristoff would only laugh at the suggestion. He didn’t seem to understand quite how much money she had, or that her money grew more money and that was the money she lived off of, and she would probably die with even more money than she currently had, without ever working another day of her life. Just one phone call, and she could set up a direct deposit into Anna’s bank account that matched her pharmaceutical company salary, pay off their mortgage and car loans, and it wouldn’t even scratch the surface of her seemingly endless sea of evil lumber money. Of course, she couldn’t say any of that, because it would be boastful, and probably make him feel bad.

“The problem is,” he continued, but stopped himself. “You know what, never mind. You’ve got enough on your hands. You don’t need my problems, too.”

“Isn’t that what friends are for, though?” It sounded like a turn of phrase, but she was genuinely curious. 

“Yeah, I guess, but — I don’t know. It just seems petty in comparison to your stuff.”

“I think my stuff is petty in comparison to yours.”

He offered a small smile. “We’re kinda dumb, aren’t we?”

“We really are.”

He sighed and looked back at the mess he’d left in the spare room. “Alright. I’m going to finish up here and head out, and I’m probably taking tomorrow off to sulk.”

“Completely understandable,” she said. “You know where to find me.”

* * *

Kristoff had given Elsa a key so she could walk and feed Sven in the morning. It seemed wrong, his giving her access to his house, presumably without his wife’s approval. At first, Elsa was very good about not touching anything or snooping, but as Sven was eating his breakfast, she thought it wouldn’t hurt to have a look around the parts of their house she couldn’t see from her own. 

She went upstairs and looked at all the pictures more closely. Again she found herself focused on Anna, who looked like a princess in her big white gown and elaborate braid. She even had a tiara. They were so beautiful, and seemed so happy together. She couldn’t imagine anything more picturesque.

Upstairs, Elsa peeked into the bedroom. It was neat, mostly, with a few of Anna’s clothes scattered around from what looked like a rushed packing job. A white IKEA desk sat in the corner. Fairy lights were strung around the ceiling. The bed had a canopy, which Elsa thought was sweet. Pops of bright color saturated the space. It looked very Anna, but there were no signs at all of Kristoff. 

The charm of their bedroom quickly fell into guilt, and Elsa hurried back down the hall, when she saw another door, which she assumed at first was a closet. She opened it. It was a third bedroom, this one smaller than the other, the size of the guest room. It was far messier than any other space in the house. Kristoff’s clothes were scattered around. The only furniture was a mattress shoved into the corner with a nest of blankets overtop, Sven's bed pushed against it. In another corner sat a large toolbox that looked as if it had puked up all its tools. A bedsheet haphazardly covered the window. 

It was possible they slept in separate bedrooms because they needed their own space. That didn’t speak to the state of their relationship, which, ultimately, Elsa knew nothing about. It was not her place to judge their marriage. Her only experience in romance came from novels, and old ones at that. Surely modern times called for modern measures. 

To Sven’s delight, she took him for a long walk up and down the beach. The ocean seemed to recognize the solemnity of the day and matched its quiet. She returned Sven to the house, locked up, and went home with the intention of getting a few more hours of sleep — in a real bed that had cost a sum so exorbitant she didn’t let Kristoff see the invoice — but she couldn’t stop thinking about what she’d seen.

She gave up eventually and decided to get some work done. Around nine, Kristoff’s truck pulled into his drive, and she watched with interest as he trudged into the house. Inside, Sven greeted him excitedly, but Kristoff didn’t have his usual, sometimes creepily matched enthusiasm. True to his word, he went back to bed, and woke up again in the early afternoon. He stayed in sweatpants and watched TV all day, except for a brief afternoon walk with Sven.

Elsa told herself to keep her distance. They were just friends, and it wasn’t her responsibility to cheer him up, and her company would probably be unwelcome anyway, but she found herself putting on her coat and getting in the car and going to the store to pick up his favorite beer (Guinness) and his favorite ice cream (moose tracks) and then she went to the only take-out in town.

She was laden with bags when she knocked on his door. He frowned when he opened it. “What are you —”

She took a page from his book and pushed past him without being invited inside. Sven rushed over and began eagerly sniffing the contents of the bags. 

“You took the day off so I took the day off, and now I’m bored so I’m making you entertain me.” She set the bags on the counter and began pulling out the contents.

Kristoff peered into the first of several Chinese food bags. “How much did you order?”

“I didn’t know what you liked so I ordered everything with a chili pepper next to it.”

“That’s like, half the menu.”

She handed him a beer. “Then I ordered half the menu.”

* * *

They ate and drank, and ate some more and drank some more, and didn’t talk at all. They began a marathon of the _ Lord of the Rings _ extended DVDs, which Elsa hadn’t seen, but she only made it to the beginning of _ Return of the King _before falling asleep on the couch. She awoke the next morning and found a blanket had been thrown over her. Kristoff was asleep in his recliner, and he woke up just moments later. Their eyes met and he offered a smile which she couldn’t help but return.

It was far easier to keep hanging out rather than ending this hang-out session and starting a new one later, so they separated only to shower in their respective houses and meet back up in Elsa’s driveway. They got in her car and drove almost an hour to the next town, where there was a little seaside diner with the best food in the state.

Eventually they had to get back to work on the house — contractors and deliverers were very timely people — but their routine in Anna’s absence changed slightly, in that Elsa and Kristoff parted only briefly throughout the day, and once they’d finished up for the evening, ate dinner together and stayed up well into the night talking or walking on the beach or watching movies Elsa had never seen.

Kristoff began slipping Anna into the conversation, at first referring to her only as “my wife” and then eventually by name. A dopey smile stretched across his face as he reminisced about her. Mostly he told stories about what she was like in high school and college, but Elsa noticed there were no recent ones, and he rarely talked about her in the present tense. She learned that Anna liked astrology, nineteenth-century novels, shopping, wine, and lacrosse, and had a nearly life-ruining sweet tooth. She’d been both valedictorian and prom queen in high school, and later received a dual degree in organizational management and English literature, graduating summa cum laude in only three and a half years. Her current employer hired her right out of school, and after the wedding, paid for her to get an MBA. Kristoff never said a bad or even neutral word about her. To him, everything about her was the best thing a person could be, and he was a mere peasant in her godlike presence. What Elsa had first seen as humility in Kristoff was now clearly a self-esteem issue.

There were several details Kristoff didn’t share directly but which Elsa put together on her own. For example, Arendelle had not always been a tourist town. Kristoff and Anna had grown up here back when it was just a small town on a somewhat grimy beach, and like everywhere else, it had been destroyed by the recession. People moved away to cheaper areas, and foreclosed houses were later bought up en masse by property conglomerates, flipped, and sold at a premium to rich people, which skyrocketed the area’s overall cost of living. Anna thus had a two-hour daily commute to work. The irony of living in a such a place was that it was expensive to live in, yet there were no jobs available within a reasonable driving distance which paid well enough to afford being a resident. The people who worked in town came in from cheaper, inland suburbs. The people who lived in town usually only summered there but wintered (and made their income) in the city. 

Elsa also learned that Kristoff had a huge middle-class family who were scattered around the area. He was the middle child of five, two sisters and two brothers. His parents had divorced when he was a teenager and each remarried, so he also had a number of step-siblings, and now a baker’s dozen nieces and nephews. Anna’s parents had been one of the many families to move away. From what Elsa could gather, Anna was somewhat distant from them. Their high school friends had, for the most part, also moved away, to pursue meaningful careers.

It should have soothed Elsa to know more about their lives, but it only tortured her further. The three weeks of Anna’s absence passed quickly, but a lot changed. Elsa was now certain her feelings for Kristoff were real, and she had begun thinking the words _ in love _ over and over, a chant to the beat of her heart, though she denied herself the full realization that she was, in fact, totally gone on him. What complicated matters was that the more she learned about Anna, the more she seemed to fall in love with her, too. She was in love with their love. Based on everything she’d ever read, that didn’t seem like an option, and yet she soaked up every crumb Kristoff offered about his relationship and still she was starving for more. She needed to know everything about them, every little detail of their lives and love. Like her books, what she wanted more than anything was to be part of their world, their easy beachside romance, their happily ever after.

* * *

It was three days before Anna was due home, and Elsa was at once dreading the loss of Kristoff’s attention and vicariously anticipating her return. They’d built a bonfire on the beach and were sitting in canvas chairs wrapped in blankets. A glittering line of moonlight bisected the blank ocean abyss. Sven fell asleep on Elsa’s feet. Between her and Kristoff, they’d finished a twelve-pack of beer. Elsa was on her third, which meant Kristoff had drunk more than usual, and, she noticed, much faster than usual. He’d been quiet all day, his mood sour. She didn’t think much of it — he missed his wife, Thanksgiving was coming up in just a week, and earlier he’d gotten into a fight with his youngest “guy” for showing up to the worksite in flip-flops and board shorts. Still, she had the impression he’d spent all day deeply considering something to which she was not privy.

“Okay,” he said into their rare minutes-long silence. “I have five things to tell you.”

“Five whole things?” she said. 

“I’m trying to be serious, okay.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. So I suck at, like, everything to do with words and talking and stuff, so I’m just going to say everything I need to say and please don’t say anything until I’m done.” He glanced up from the fire. She was staring at him with concern. “And don’t look at me. And I won’t look at you. We’ll look at the fire and pretend it has all the answers.”

“Okay,” she said, and looked into the fire. Her hands had begun to shake, and she hid them in her blanket.

“One,” Kristoff said. “I think my wife is cheating on me.”

She had to bite the inside of her cheek to keep from reacting. He paused as if waiting for her to say something, a test, but she stayed silent.

“There’s this guy she works with. Hans. She’s like, obsessed. They text all the time and I always catch her smiling at her phone and stuff. She talks about him a lot. Gushes about him, like he’s a celebrity.” 

Elsa had a hundred questions but forced herself to remain silent. She wrung the blanket in her hands.

“Two,” Kristoff said. “The problem isn’t that she’s cheating on me. It’s that I don’t care.”

She couldn’t help herself this time. She glanced up from the fire and looked at him, opened her mouth to say something, but he said, “Don’t. Just — let me finish.” The wind blew his hair into his eyes, and it was difficult to keep herself from reaching out to smooth it down. “At first I was upset she hadn’t at least told me, because I would’ve been cool about it, you know? She’s the bravest person I know, owns up to everything, and it’s just so unlike her to do something like this. But that was only at first. Now, after meeting you, I get it.”

He leaned forward and buried his face in his palms. “Three,” he said, and ran his hands through his hair, staring into the fire angrily. “I have feelings for you. Obviously.”

The ground spun beneath her and she realized she had stopped breathing. Her pounding heart drowned out the crackling fire, Sven’s light snores, the tide slipping up the shore. 

“I didn’t think something like this would ever happen to me,” Kristoff said. “It happens to other people, ones who aren’t married to the best person in the universe. It never occurred to me there could be two best people in the universe, and I’d be lucky enough to know them. And — sorry, but I don’t want to know if you feel the same. If you don’t, that would suck. If you do, that would also suck. So we’re just going to table that for now.”

“I understand,” she said as neutrally as she could manage, though she wanted to scream with joy, and also maybe cry.

“And like, is it cheating just to have feelings for someone else even if you don’t do anything about them? Because I can’t help it, you know? Like they just happened. What was I supposed to do, be like, ‘Oh no a pretty girl is bleeding to death in my arms, guess I’ll throw her out so I don’t fall in love.’ Or maybe it’s cheating because —” He took a long breath. “Okay, four, and this is probably the worst thing. I haven’t told Anna about you. Not a word. You’re the first secret I’ve ever kept from her. I tell her everything, like seriously everything, but I met you and — I’ve been so selfish. I just wanted you for myself. And I’ve been avoiding telling you this, but you two are so much alike. Sometimes I look at you and I see her, but the old her, the one from before the job. The one I fell in love with. And I knew if I introduced you, you two would become like, instant best friends, because she’s amazing and you’re amazing and I know you’d just click, and I’d get pushed out.”

He closed his eyes and looked genuinely pained. “I go to your house and I’m not a guy who got married at twenty-two. I’m not one half of a whole. I’m just me. And for a while I really didn’t want to talk about Anna at all, but the more we got to know each other, the more I realized that you _ can’t _know me without knowing her, that’s how much a part of me she is. I don’t think that’s a bad thing, but now I’m beginning to wonder who I even am, and I think that’s why I don’t care that she might be cheating on me. Like, good for her, you know? Taking something for herself. She’s miserable at that job, and if she can find some pleasure in it, good, I’m glad.

“The only thing I’ve ever wanted is for her to be happy, but she’s not happy, so I’m not happy. She wants to move out of Arendelle to be closer to work, but I won’t leave. These are my people. This is my home. I’m somebody here. Anywhere else, I’m nobody. Staying here is the only thing I’ve ever put my foot down about. That was when all the problems started. I’ve prioritized her my entire life, but I need to think of myself sometimes too.”

Elsa took his hand between both of her own and held it in her lap. He squeezed it, seemingly with gratitude. 

“Five.” He could no longer look at the fire, but away from her entirely, as if hoping the wind would carry his words away. “That time in the kitchen. With Anna. I knew you could see. That’s why I did it.” He squeezed her hand more tightly. “That day you locked yourself out of the house, when I went in to get your keys, I saw you could see right into the kitchen from your window. I know it was like, super wrong, but I told myself it was fine because I wasn’t sure you were even watching, and if you were, then, you know, fine. But then the next day you looked like I was about to hit you with my truck, and I knew.”

“Why did you want me to see?” she asked quietly.

“I don’t know. Sexual boredom? Latent exhibitionist tendencies? I guess it’s more like, I didn’t want to share you with her, but I wanted to share her with you. Which sounds so fucked-up when I say it out loud.” He sighed. “I’m so bad at expressing stuff. I didn’t know how else to show you I wanted you. But I don’t think that message was very clear.”

The fire dwindled, and the sea inched closer to them with each gentle wave. Sven rolled on his side, closer to the fire.

“I haven’t been completely honest with you, either,” she said, not sure if she was ready to have this conversation, but pushing forward anyway. “I’ve never been in a relationship before, or even really had a friend, so this is all new to me.”

“You mean you’ve never…”

“Nothing. No kissing, no sex, no —” She held up his hand. “Hand-holding.”

“But you’re like, so hot. Like deliriously hot.” She lifted an eyebrow at him, and he added, “Sorry, that’s not very helpful.”

“No one’s ever called me hot, either.”

“Well I guarantee they’ve thought it.”

Despite her best efforts against it, she found herself blushing. “At Fjord, I knew a lot of people, and they were nice to me, but I could never tell if they liked me or they just wanted to appease me. If they were trying to get money or clout from me. I don’t know who I am without Fjord. Like you with Anna. All I knew was that I didn’t want to be a business anymore. I wanted to be a person. That’s why I sold it. And — if I tell you this next part, you probably won’t like me anymore.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but my life would be a thousand times easier if I didn’t like you, so please tell me.”

She stared into the fire, each word wrenched out of her with difficulty. “Fjord had some terrible practices, in regard to the environment. I spent years trying to right them, but at the end of the day, we’re a lumber company. Our business is cutting down trees. We can plant and plant, but trees take a long time to grow, and ultimately we have to take down more than we put up. To make it right, I would have had to change the very fabric of the company.”

“You mean you’d have to _ uproot _ the company?”

She glared at him.

“Sorry.”

“For a while I thought I could make everything perfect. I hired teams of people to find solutions. I thought I had all this power, but businesses have bylaws, and any major change to the company has to be voted on by the board. I showed them all of our solutions. And they said no. That was when I realized I was only a face. A placeholder. The only authority I had was to dissolve the company or sell it. I thought, what about all these employees? All these people whose livelihoods are in my hands? So I didn’t get rid of the company, I got rid of myself. But then Weselton fired everyone anyway. I know you think highly of me, Kristoff, but you shouldn’t. I’m not a good person.”

“Wow, my problems really are nothing compared to yours.” 

She couldn’t manage to glare even harder, but she tried.

“Look,” he said. “My wife works for a pharmaceutical company that charges eight-hundred times what it costs to make their products. They test on animals. They find ways to skirt FDA approval. Working there doesn’t make Anna a bad person, but she is complicit in bad things. You were born into an industry that is pretty much necessary to modern life. It’s not your fault politics and the economy and _ greed _ are just —” He made a wide hand gesture around them. “— destroying everything. You did what you had to do. You turned responsibility over to someone else, and they did you dirty, and that sucks. But you’re not a bad person, and, you know, sorry, but I’m still crazy about you.”

Of all the outcomes she had considered in buying an old mansion on a beach, finding the love of a kind man was not one. “I know you asked me not to say this, but I feel the same way. Obviously.”

“If I weren’t married, now would be a really good time to kiss you.”

“It would.” She wanted more than anything to be kissed by him, held by him, go to sleep and wake up beside him. They fell silent for a time, a sad silence full of all the things they weren’t allowed to say or do. 

"I know I’ve done some shitty things this past month," Kristoff began, "but I’m not so shitty that I’m going to say, like, ‘I’m in love with you so we can never speak again.’ So what should I do? About this. Us.”

She took a long moment to consider. “You definitely need to tell Anna about me, and that we have feelings for each other. And I think it’s fair to request she come clean about Hans.”

“What if she wants a divorce?” He spoke the word like a curse.

She hadn’t let herself think that far. The idea should have made her happy, but it didn’t. Kristoff would be so hurt, and he and Anna loved each other so much. Elsa was not so selfish that she would wish such a tragedy on anyone.

“If you get a divorce, I’ll be here for you. But I don’t think it’ll come to that.”

“What if she wants me to stop seeing you?”

“Then you’ll have a difficult choice to make, and I’ll honor whatever you decide.”

“That’s not fair to either of us.”

“No,” she said, “but nothing about this is fair.”


	4. Chapter 4

Elsa was grateful for the routine they’d established, and that many people were coming in and out of her house. She counted down the hours until Anna would return, which she hoped would keep her from acting on her feelings for Kristoff. For once, she was grateful for her lack of experience, because she didn’t know how to initiate anything anyway.

Now that everything was out in the open, though, Kristoff was far less subtle about his flirtation, but also doubly nervous, and seemed to do everything in his power not to be alone with her during the day. But eventually all the workers left and they were the only two remaining in Elsa’s big empty house. She had found him in one of the upstairs spare rooms, which he’d spent the day flooring. It sat directly above the living room and faced the ocean. The sun was out, beginning to set, and streaming a dim orange through the windows onto the half-finished floor.

“I’m just cleaning up,” Kristoff said, his back to her as he rummaged through his toolbox.

“Take your time.”

She’d come to ask if he wanted to have dinner with her, afraid that after yesterday, things might be too strained. But there were too many thoughts on her tongue, and she’d spent so much time with him that her social mores had all but fled, and she asked, “We can at least talk about it, right? Is talking cheating?”

He went to put a hammer in his toolbox. “Depends on what you want to say.”

“I want to say — were it possible, I’d like to have sex with you.”

He dropped the hammer. 

“That shouldn’t be a surprise,” she said.

The back of his neck turned red as he went to pick up the hammer. “And yet, it is.” 

“I think you’re very handsome." It felt both relieving and torturous to be so open. "I want to kiss you all the time.” 

He occupied himself by reorganizing what looked like a series of tiny screwdrivers in their slots, presumably so he could continue facing away from her. “I’ve never — Anna’s the only one, you know. She went off to college and told me to play the field. But I didn’t. I only ever wanted her.” He finished with the screwdrivers and closed his toolbox. “Until you.” 

She imagined vines growing up from the ground to root her to the spot so she wouldn’t move closer to him. “Maybe we shouldn’t talk about it.”

Finally he turned around, but his eyes were still averted. He took a seat on a rung of the step-ladder. “No, this is good. I like this, being honest. Ask me something.”

She leaned against a wall that was now painted a light sage and which she didn’t remember approving. It was a suspiciously Kristoff color and she wondered if he’d gone rogue on decorating. She found she didn’t hate it.

“What’s it like?” she asked, surprising herself. “Sex.”

He frowned a little. “You’ve really never…?”

She shook her head. “Not even close.”

“Well, it’s. I don’t know. Great. Sometimes.” Somehow he’d gotten a wrench in his hands and he occupied himself twisting it open and closed. “But it can also be, you know, not-great.”

“How?”

“Separation of body and mind. Brain goes one direction, body another. And it can get boring.”

“I don’t believe that.”

“You’re with someone long enough, it becomes a routine like anything else. Anna and I —” He paused and looked at her guiltily. “Sorry, I won’t talk about that.”

“No, I want to know.”

He took a long breath. “Tuesdays and Fridays. Thirty-five minutes starting promptly at ten p.m. Same positions, every time. Then she falls asleep.”

“Has it always been like that?”

He huffed a sad laugh. “Not at all. We used to do all sorts of weird stuff.”

She raised her eyebrows.

“Come on. You don’t want to hear about that.”

“You have no idea how false that is.”

He sighed, and kept his eyes trained on his hands. “I almost don’t remember the first time. We did everything by the book. We were juniors. She was sixteen, I was seventeen. We’d been dating for six months which felt like a really long time back then. It was her idea to have sex, and that like, blew my mind. It was spring and we ended up doing it in a field. After that we were insatiable. We had to sneak around all the time, because parents. We did it in the woods, on the beach, the back of my truck. Movie theaters. The library.”

“You had sex in a library?” She’d always seen libraries as sacred spaces. She was scandalized by the thought. 

“So many times. Also, a Blockbuster.”

“You’re so old.”

“You’re older than me.”

“But I’ve never been to a Blockbuster.”

“Do you want to know about my wild sex life or not?”

“I do. Please continue.”

He leveled a glare at her. “_Any_way. At the time I hated having to sneak around. I kept thinking about the day when we’d get to have sex whenever we wanted, naked, in a bed, like normal people. But now, I don’t know. I miss how exciting it was. All the first times and the newness and having a ten-minute refractory period.”

“I went to an all-girls boarding school,” she told him forlornly.

“Did you have one of those schoolgirl outfits? Sorry, inappropriate. I’m not a pervert, I swear.”

“We did have uniforms, yes.”

He stared into space. “I’m never going to be able to think about anything else in my life.”

“I still have it somewhere.” She cocked her head to the side. “I could put it on for you.”

“You’re killing me.”

“Is this flirting? Are we flirting?”

“It’s a little more than flirting at this point.”

“But you’ve been flirting with me, right?”

He gave her a bemused look. “Yes, Elsa, I’ve been flirting with you.”

“Good. You may continue to do so.”

“Thank you, your highness.”

She made a royal hand gesture. “Go on with your story.”

“Right. So after Anna went to college, I got an apartment uptown. She came home for holidays and summer, and whenever she got into a fight with her parents, she’d come stay at my place. And we weren’t together then, but —”

“Wait. When did you break up? Before or after she left?”

“It wasn’t that cut-and-dried. It was a slow death over her first semester, and even then it was just —” He shrugged. “She wanted us both to start seeing other people. It sucked, like really sucked, but again, looking back, the fun was in wanting each other and not being able to do anything about it. We’d spent years fucking each other’s brains out, and then we had to actually get to know each other. And we did. It took almost a year of not boning, but we really were best friends for a long time. That was when I figured it out, that we were meant to be together. Her friendship meant so much more to me than romance, you know?”

“Definitely,” Elsa lied. 

“Romance is easy,” he continued. “It’s like chucking some wood on a fire you know will eventually go out. Friendship, though — that’s so much harder. It’s lighting a thousand candles night after night, just to give some light to the space you’re in.”

They listened to the steady crash of the sea against the cliffs. To the north, she could see the browns, oranges, and yellows of a nearby wood, the branches swaying in the wind.

“It was pretty intense for a while there,” he said. “Her senior year, I could kind of feel things changing again. She’d started calling me every night, and we’d talk on the phone until she fell asleep. She said all this stuff about how much she missed me, and Arendelle, and that she wished we could go back to the way things used to be. That was when I fell in love the second time, over the phone. But I was convinced she’d get a job right out of school and move somewhere with a stable job market. She’d worked so hard, and I wanted her to follow her dreams. So I pushed her away. Stopped answering her calls. I told her I was seeing someone else, which — obviously I wasn’t. It broke her heart, but there was nothing here for her. No family. No friends. Just me. And I knew I wasn’t worth sticking around for.”

“That’s not true.”

He smiled to himself. “She didn’t think so either. But I was right about one thing. She got head-hunted, negotiated the hell out of it, and walked out of school with two degrees and a six-figure salary. She got an apartment in the city, but came down to see me every weekend. At first she said it was to visit her parents, but then her parents moved, and she had no more excuses. I was still pretending I wasn’t in love with her, but it was getting harder. I wanted to marry her.”

Elsa had taken a seat, cross-legged at Kristoff’s feet, as if he were reading a storybook. “And then what happened?”

“When the lease on her apartment was up, she told me she couldn’t find a new place that ‘lived up to her standards,’ as if she had any. She asked if she could crash at my place for a while, which was a thousand times shittier than any apartment in the city. She started commuting to work, and she didn’t complain, but I knew she hated it. I kept asking when she was going to find her own place, but she said she was too busy to look, and she got tired of me sleeping on the couch when she was there, so she insisted I start sleeping with her, and then _ sleeping _with her, and that was it. We never technically started dating again. I thought I was going to die if I didn’t propose, so I did, which surprised her I guess because I’d done such a good job pretending I’d moved on. And then I blinked and we were married.”

Elsa would have given anything to be a fly on the wall the nights Anna urged him into bed. His seeming reluctance met with her forthright insistence. Hesitant kisses. Familiarity and newness, all at once. Kristoff thinking it was just one time and it didn’t mean anything, knowing that wasn’t true. Anna believing the only man she’d ever loved no longer felt the same for her. What a sweet pain that must have been.

“I should stop,” Kristoff said. “It’s all downhill from here.” 

“No, please continue. What happened with her job?”

He exhaled an aggrieved breath. “She didn’t say anything for a long time. And I was stupid enough to believe she was happy. Then I fell into this bad place where I wasn’t finding work, and I didn’t resent her for her success, but it was obvious I wasn’t good enough for her, and we started drifting apart. I got lonely, and bored, and then she got me Sven. And he made things better for a while. Then, I don’t know, a few years ago she started emailing me listings for houses in the suburbs. Way cheaper. Shorter commute by far. But no beach. No little shops. Just sprawl. I don’t think she was expecting me to say no, because I never say no. But I did. I told her there was no way I was leaving, and that if she wanted to live somewhere else, she could, and we’d just have a long-distance marriage. That pissed her off. I think it’s the only real fight we’ve ever had, and all the other fights just branched off from that one. 

“We agreed on the beach house even though it was the absolute max of our price range. I think she thought, if she’s going to lose her life to her career, she might as well live on the beach. She did everything she could to lessen the strain. Applied to work from home. Asked to work four ten-hour days instead of five eight-hour ones. Looked for cheap apartments to live in during the week. I should’ve been more supportive. It makes me sick, how I handled that. I just refused to acknowledge it, that Arendelle wasn’t the town it used to be. That I wasn’t earning my keep. That my wife’s job was killing her. She was drowning and I didn’t save her. And now I think she’s gone. Or at least, the part of her that loved me.”

A rain cloud passed over the sun and the room fell briefly dark. Elsa wiped her face with her sleeve. 

“Oh god,” Kristoff said. “Don’t cry. She’s in China, not dead.”

“I know. It’s just, it’s not fair.”

“Like you said.” He idly spun the wrench in his hands. “Nothing about this is fair.”

“Please tell me that’s the end.”

“Almost. Do you want me to stop?”

“No. Go ahead.”

“So, Anna has this like, internalized checklist. Degree, check. Marriage, check. Career, check. House, check. And she has to do it all perfectly. She’s driven by achievement, but she’s not very patient. She climbed the ladder pretty fast at her job, and it kept her invested for a long time, but she’s plateaued. No more raises. No more promotions. All work and no reward. And that’s when it really started draining her. About a year ago, I finally suggested she quit her job, which she took about as well as you’d expect. I think she thought I was calling her a failure. She accused me of expecting her to give everything up for me, and I reminded her that I had to pretend not to be in love with her for years so she’d leave me. She said it wasn’t fair that she had to choose between me or her job. I said it wasn’t fair that she expected me to leave the only home I’ve ever known for a thing she’d grown to hate. Then she said a lot of mean things, about how I have no ambition, no self-worth, I’m a coward, and that I was right, she is too good for me. It hurt a lot. I don’t think we’ve really recovered. Or at least, I haven’t.

“The next item on the checklist is kids. We both want them. But we avoid the topic now. It’s an entire stampede of elephants in the room. If I said, like, ‘Hey remember all those kids we wanted to have? And if we don’t start planning for them soon it might be too late?’ she would just shatter. To her, it’s another failure, another thing to hate about herself.”

“I don’t understand,” Elsa said. “Why doesn’t she quit?”

“Whenever I ask, she says it’s about money, and throws it back on me that I don’t make enough, that I should have gone to college, that I should be working on expanding my business or finding new clients. She thinks if she’s mean enough, I won’t ask. But really it’s because she’s had her nose to the grindstone every day of her life, and if she’s not constantly progressing, she’ll die. I think she’s terrified, more than anything else, of being bored. Stagnant. And yeah, adulthood can be tedious, but it’s also peaceful. Not stagnation but stillness. And that’s not a bad thing. You can savor so much more when you’re still. But she doesn’t see it that way, and I’m not sure she ever will.”

Outside, a seagull cried. The sky had clouded over fully as the sun sank down on the horizon. Elsa stood and hugged him, and he hesitated briefly before wrapping his arms around her. They held each other for a long moment. When he pulled away, his gaze narrowed to her lips, dark suddenly, and she never thought moments like this were real, but it took all of her restraint not to press her mouth to his. With a complicated look of remorse, he stepped away. “Bad idea.”

“A very bad idea,” she agreed.

“We shouldn’t, you know —”

“Touch.”

“Until...”

“Until?”

“Nothing.” He wiped his hands on a rag. “I’m going to head home and get cleaned up. Meet you in twenty?”

“Sure, yeah,” she said, relieved their nightly dinner engagement had not been canceled.

He paused at the door. Then he turned around, cupped her face in his hands, and pressed a firm kiss to her forehead. “I really like you, Elsa.”

“I like you, too.”

Her response seemed to satisfy him; he nodded to himself and left.

* * *

Kristoff had begun the arduous task of teaching Elsa how to cook. It had been weeks and still she couldn’t do much more than set the oven and boil water, but she was doing her best to learn knifework. He teased her about being slow at it, but she liked to make each cut perfect. That night they’d decided to make pizza at his house. He’d prepped the dough and made the sauce himself, while she grated the mozzarella and chopped up some vegetables. They were listening to music, some bluegrass-sounding band that she didn’t particularly like, but it was so very Kristoff that she appreciated it for that reason alone. 

“I left my phone upstairs,” he said. “Anna’s supposed to call soon. Be right back.” 

Elsa was so concentrated on making each slice of tomato the exact same width that she failed to hear the crunch of gravel outside, or the slam of a trunk. She did, however, catch the squeal of the front door, and assumed that Kristoff had gone to the porch to make the call, until she looked up and saw Anna. Sven hopped up on her and whined, but she hadn’t acknowledged him. She was too busy staring at Elsa blankly.

“Kristoff!” she called. “Why is the top-earning female CEO of all time in my kitchen?”

“Oh no, that can’t be true,” Elsa said. “Please tell me that isn’t true.”

Anna rooted around in her briefcase and pulled out an old issue of _ Forbes _ with Elsa’s face on it. The headline read, ELSA FJORD, NOW THE TOP-EARNING FEMALE CEO OF ALL TIME.

Elsa had no recollection of that interview or photoshoot.

“Is this a jet-lag-induced hallucination?” Anna asked. “Like am I tripping balls right now?”

“I’m afraid not.”

Elsa heard Kristoff run downstairs. “What are you doing here?”

“What am _ I _doing here? What is Elsa fucking Fjord doing here?” She looked at Elsa. “No offense.”

“She’s our neighbor,” Kristoff said.

“In the creepy house?”

“It’s not creepy anymore.”

“I should go,” Elsa said, inching toward the door.

In unison, they said, “No.”

Elsa stayed put. 

Anna looked from Elsa, to Kristoff, back to Elsa, back to Kristoff. “Oh, my god.”

“It’s not what it looks like,” Kristoff said.

“I knew you were cheating, but I thought it was like, Stacy or someone.”

“From the library? She’s sixteen.”

“She’s pretty. You’re nice to her.”

“I’m nice to everyone. And she’s half my age. Is that what you think of me?”

“You’re a cheater. Who knows what you’re willing to fuck.” To Elsa she said, “Sorry. I’m not angry at you. I’m sure you’re lovely.”

“Me?” Kristoff said. “You’re the cheater. You’re not even subtle about Hans.”

“I did not cheat on you with Hans.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

“I’m not lying.” She gripped her briefcase more tightly. “We slept in the same bed, okay. Once. Fully clothed. And we made out a little. That’s it. He didn’t even touch my boobs.”

Kristoff sank onto the bottom step, his hand still on the banister. “Oh my god. It’s true.”

Anna looked to Elsa. “Will you tell him he’s being ridiculous? Hans is a white-collar schmuck, and you’re like —” She made a hand gesture up and down Elsa’s body. “You.”

“Anna,” Elsa said gently. “He’s not cheating on you. He’s been helping me renovate my house.”

“Fuck it. We’re getting it all out now,” Kristoff said miserably, his head in his hands. “We have feelings for each other. But we haven’t acted on them.”

“Feelings?” Anna asked, face falling.

“Feelings,” Elsa confirmed, both relieved to get it all out so quickly, and terrified it was happening at all.

“I didn’t have feelings for Hans,” Anna said spitefully. “We were bored and drunk and lonely. I would never be cruel enough to fall in love with someone else.”

“I’m sorry,” Kristoff said. “This isn’t how I wanted to do this.”

Anna’s chin wobbled slightly but she clenched her jaw to settle it. Her face clouded over. Elsa saw so much of herself in the gesture — poise and propriety, grace under fire. Never let them see your weakness, her mother used to say. People are vultures. Rest for just a moment and they’ll eat you alive. 

“I’m sorry too,” Elsa said. Kristoff was right; she could tell that under different circumstances, she and Anna would have clicked. Not only was Anna far more beautiful in person than she was in her photos, she had an intensity about her that Elsa was drawn to, an aura of kindness and integrity that was currently obscured by betrayal. They were finally physically in the same room, after weeks of Anna only being with them in spirit, and it crushed Elsa to know that this would be Anna’s first impression of her — secrets and lies, though the truth was far more complicated than it seemed.

Anna grabbed her suitcase and made for the door.

“Where are you going?” Kristoff asked.

“Finding an AirBnB. The only thing this town is good for.”

She slammed the door on her way out. Kristoff curled into a ball, hands covering his head protectively. Elsa slid onto the step beside him, cramped in the narrow space. She put her arm around him. Sven, whining, wriggled between Kristoff’s knees and licked at his face.

* * *

Kristoff tried calling Anna a few times but she didn’t answer. He and Elsa ate but neither could stomach more than a few bites. They took Sven on a long, cold walk up and down the beach. They didn’t speak.

Elsa stuck around for a couple of episodes of television, but she had trouble paying attention. It was well after midnight when she said she should be heading home.

“I don’t want you to leave,” Kristoff said. “I’m so tired of being alone.”

It was rare enough for Kristoff to assert anything he wanted, and after all he’d done for her, she was obliged to stay even though she thought it was a bad idea. She followed him up to his room and they lay in bed, facing each other but not touching. 

“I hate this,” he said.

“I know.”

“I feel like I’m being cut in half. If she makes me choose — I honestly don’t know what I’ll do. She’s said some awful things to me. She’s really hurt me. And now with Hans, I just. Maybe this can’t be fixed.”

Elsa took his hand and threaded their fingers together. “I don’t know Anna very well, but I know she loves you.” The skin of his palm had the heat and roughness of a chunk of coal. “If you explain it to her, I’m sure she’ll understand.”

“And then what? We just go on like this? We’ve been in a holding pattern for a decade. I’m sick of it. Something has to give.”

“Maybe. But nothing needs to be solved tonight.”

He closed his eyes and shifted closer, his head tucked under her chin. “Will you stay?”

“Kris,” she said, reluctant.

“Just for a little bit. Until I fall asleep.”

“Okay,” she said. “Until you fall asleep.”

* * *

A storm swept in and Elsa awoke to a crack of thunder. It was late, nearing four in the morning according to Kristoff’s alarm clock which sat on his windowsill. She was still holding him, but now his thigh was slotted between her legs; her knee had slid up to his hip. His body was almost uncomfortably warm. They were so tangled together, she couldn’t figure out how to extract herself without disturbing him. It was made more difficult by his arm draped heavily over her, and his hand possessively spanning her lower back. She kissed the top of his head while she thought, and combed her fingers through his hair which was surprisingly soft and full. Beside them, Sven snored through the storm.

Eventually she gathered the courage to pull away. His mouth twisted into a frown, clearly displeased. His eyes didn’t open, nor did he wake fully, or even at all, but he did grasp for her as if to drag her back, and muttered disapprovingly, “Anna.”

“Not Anna,” Elsa whispered, her heart not quite breaking, but shifting painfully in her chest. 

She had not expected him to hear, but his eyes opened wide. He glanced around at where he was and who he was with, and visibly recalled what had transpired that evening, his face contorting as if in physical pain. 

“I’m sorry,” Elsa said. She hadn’t even made it out of bed, only sitting up now, the covers pulled aside. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“It’s okay. We shouldn’t be — you know.”

She leaned down to press a soft kiss to his cheek, but he reached up and caught her neck, turned his face toward her, their noses brushing, lips just an inch apart. His thoughts rang loudly — Anna slept beside someone else. Anna kissed someone else. Why couldn’t he? His fingers slid into her hair as he held her there, each beat chipping through the wall between them. 

A flash of lightning. The sea raging against the cliffs. Thunder, rolling its long way to silence. “I can’t,” he said, “I’m sorry,” and let his hand fall. She was as hurt as she was heartened — Kristoff was a good man, and she wished more than anything their lives could be different.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FYI I changed the chapter number from 11 to 10, not because I cut anything out, but because I combined two shorter chapters into one, which is why this one is kinda long.

Kristoff didn’t come over that morning. Elsa rescheduled the day’s work and deliveries. She had strategically placed a sitting chair in front of the north-facing window and pretended to read all day, while checking repeatedly to see if Anna had returned home. Kristoff woke late, walked Sven, and hardly ate anything all day. He glanced into her window a few times. She did not attempt to hide, and he didn’t seem to care. Perhaps it soothed him, to know that she was watching. 

It was well after dark when Anna’s car pulled into the driveway. Kristoff met her at the front door. She walked past him and carried her luggage inside. Her bedroom light came on but the curtains were closed, and Kristoff looked into Elsa’s window as if asking for strength. Elsa nodded her encouragement. Then he followed his wife upstairs.

Having realized she too had barely eaten, Elsa busied herself fixing a sandwich with bread that Kristoff had baked for her. Normally she enjoyed his bread, but she found she could hardly taste it. Food seemed to crumble to ash in her mouth. She was just cleaning up when her phone buzzed on the counter. Kristoff’s name lit up the screen.

“Hello?” she answered, and went to the window, where he was in his kitchen looking into her house, phone against his ear. He’d gotten dressed in a pair of jeans and his ugliest sweater, a lumpy woolen thing with a knit pattern of reindeer.

“Anna wants you to come over.”

“Is she planning to murder me?”

Kristoff looked into the living room, past where Elsa could see, presumably where Anna was sitting. “I mean, maybe.”

“I guess that’s a risk I’ll have to take.”

He smiled at that, which felt like a small victory, and she hung up.

* * *

Over the weeks prior, she’d gotten used to letting herself in, but now she paused, her hand over the knob, and chose instead to knock. Kristoff was quick to open the door. He looked at her then with such fondness, it was hard to believe she ever thought he wasn’t interested.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey.”

He moved to the side and let her in. She led herself to the living room. Anna was sitting on the couch, the spot that Elsa hadn’t realized she saw as her own. She was wearing the hot pink hoodie that Elsa had worn after she’d locked herself out of the house. Despite Anna’s comfortable appearance, she was sitting rigidly straight, one leg crossed over the other, with an expensive-looking padfolio in her lap. 

Kristoff had put on his coat and was clipping a leash to Sven’s collar. 

“Where are you going?” Elsa asked.

“Letting you two talk it out.”

She looked at him in alarm, and he offered an apologetic shrug on his way out the door. Traitor, she thought.

“Have a seat,” Anna said, and patted the space beside her.

Elsa perched at the edge of the cushion in case she had to make a quick escape. She knew Kristoff kept a rifle somewhere, but the likelihood Anna would shoot her was slim. More likely, she’d use the poker by the fireplace. 

Anna mimed taking off a hat and setting it between them. “My scorned-wife hat.” Then she picked up a different invisible hat and put it on. She took a steadying breath, paused, and her eyes flew open. “Oh my god, it is so cool meeting you. You have no idea how much of an inspiration you are to me.” She grabbed Elsa’s hand and shook it between both of her own. Her handshake was like a vice, like men with power issues had taught her how to shake hands. “I’m so sorry we’re meeting under these circumstances, but I also really cannot believe you’re in my house right now. And you have a thing for my husband? What the hell is that? I mean I get what _ I _ see in him, but I don’t get what _ you _see in him.”

The handshake had ended, but Anna didn’t pull away, instead continued holding Elsa’s hand between her own. 

“Your husband has shown me exceptional kindness,” Elsa said. “I value his friendship so much. He’s an amazing man.”

“Yeah,” she said with sudden softness. “He’s great, isn’t he?”

“He really is.”

Her eyebrows pinched together as if she had suddenly tasted something sour. “Or at least, he _ was _until this whole mess started.”

Elsa looked out the window, where Kristoff was walking suspiciously close to the house. He glanced inside, saw Elsa looking, and quickly looked away to inspect something very important on the ground. 

“I think it’s fixable, though, don’t you?” Elsa asked.

“Of course _ you _ would say that,” Anna said. “Imagine being a schlep like me and finding out your husband is dating a hot millionaire behind your back.”

“You think I’m hot?”

“Don’t change the subject.”

Elsa pulled off Anna’s invisible hat and settled another one on her head.

“Which hat is that?” Anna asked.

“It’s your feelings-talking hat.” Elsa put one on her own head too. “Now we have to be completely honest with each other.”

Anna made a disparaging sound and sunk back onto the couch. “I was planning to be all mean and accuse you of ruining my marriage, and then I was going to say, like, ‘Get out of my house, you homewrecker!’ And tomorrow at work I was going to be all, ‘You will not believe what nonsense just happened in my life.’”

“Would you still like to do that?”

“No,” Anna said, crossing her arms over her chest. “Kris said all this dumb mushy stuff about how great you are and how happy you’ve made him. It’s a shitty situation but being angry isn’t going to help anything. And, like, you’re Elsa Fjord for fuck’s sake. _ Elsa Fjord._” She held her hand out. “Will you hold my hand again?”

Elsa took her hand. It was so small and soft compared to her husband’s. Kristoff had built a fire before he left and it crackled happily in the fireplace. 

“Okay,” Anna began. “I think it would help me trust both of you a lot more if you’d give me your version of events.”

Elsa told her everything, including the two weeks she’d spent watching them from afar, locking herself out of the house, Kristoff coming to her aid, spending the night, and the next morning’s breakdown in the bathroom. She pointed out every physical touch, relayed every conversation she could remember — 

“I’m sorry, you’re paying him how much?”

Elsa told her the figure she’d offered Kristoff for renovating the house.

“Jesus crust, that’s a lot of money.”

— and that he had tried to keep Anna out of their friendship but couldn’t, all the way through to their conversation on the beach, and Anna walking in on their dinner preparations.

“That all lines up with what he told me,” Anna said with surprising sadness. Elsa thought she would have been happy to know they weren’t lying to her. Maybe the truth made things more difficult, knowing her presence had been in their relationship the entire time.

Elsa couldn’t help herself. She reached up and tucked Anna’s hair behind her ear. “I know we don’t know each other well, but your happiness is so important to me. I’m sorry for the pain I’ve caused you. That was never my intention. Please know I’ll do anything to help you and Kristoff, even if that means walking away.”

Anna’s eyes turned glassy, and she used her free hand to wipe at them. “Kristoff said you’d say that. He said, ‘She’d do anything to see us happy again. She cares about both of us.’ And I didn’t believe him.”

“Do you now?”

Anna nodded, and looked to be about to say something more, but Kristoff came inside then, hair covered in sparkling snow, and shook it off just as Sven did. He looked at the two of them holding hands, Anna crying, and said, “This is either very good or very bad.”

“I think I need some time to process this,” Anna said, and told Elsa, “You can stay. I’ll be back later.”

They watched her go upstairs.

“Did I call it?” Kristoff asked as he shrugged off his coat. His nose and cheeks were pink, and for a moment Elsa thought he was about to sit beside her, put his arm around her, and she’d curl up at his side into his hideous sweater, and talk about what to make for supper. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I figured you’d say something like —” He pitched his voice higher and over-enunciated each syllable: “I shall return to my castle and speak nary a word to either of you ever again, if you so desire.” 

“Where I come from,” Elsa said, “boastfulness is frowned upon.”

“I totally called it.”

* * *

Later that evening, Kristoff taught Elsa how to cook chocolate chip pancakes, Anna’s favorite sad-day meal. He lined up the chocolate chips in the batter to form a heart, and stood behind her at the stove, his hand over hers on the pan handle. “You have to wait until you get those little bubbles at the edge, see? And then —” Together they flipped the pancake. Elsa found it all very thrilling. Once they had a stack of three, he covered them in powdered sugar and freshly sliced strawberries, and arranged it all on a tray with maple syrup and a can of whipped cream.

“Is this a meal?” Elsa asked. “It looks like dessert.”

He added a giant glass of chocolate milk to the tray. “It is, but don’t tell her that. Would you like to or should I?”

“I’ll go,” Elsa offered, and carried the tray carefully up the steps. Anna’s door was open a crack. “May I come in?”

She thought she heard an affirmative noise, so she pushed her way inside. Sven followed dutifully at her heels. Anna was curled in bed with her hood up, cinched all the way to her nose.

“We made you dinner,” Elsa said.

Anna sniffed the air, her small pointed nose wiggling from the center of her hood. Warily, she said, “Chocolate chip pancakes?”

“Yes.”

“With little hearts and strawberries?”

“Yes.”

“And chocolate milk?”

“And chocolate milk.”

“And a note?”

“Um.” She hadn’t seen Kristoff write one, but there it was, tucked under the plate. 

“You can open it,” Anna said.

Elsa plucked it out and unfolded it. Inside was a crude drawing of Sven with wiggly stink lines. Beside him stood a stick-figure Kristoff, but instead of stink lines there were lopsided hearts. The caption beneath read, SVEN & KRIS LOVE U!!!!!!!!

Elsa took a seat at the edge of the bed and handed the note to Anna, who lowered her hood to read it, then held it to her heart. “What a jerk.”

“The worst,” Elsa agreed.

“The _ worst_.”

Elsa glanced around the room, at the garish lime green walls and shelves full of stuffed animals. Anna’s MacBook and iPhone charged on her clean white desk, beside a framed photo of Kristoff: a candid shot, hair curling up from under his hat, laughing among autumn-tinged trees. A wide bookshelf stood against the far wall with hundreds of books — spine-damaged paperbacks; thick business textbooks; volumes of modern thrillers and popular young adult sagas, amid Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf and Mary Shelley. 

“Did he tell you how terrible I’ve been to him?” Anna asked.

“He told me you’ve said some hurtful things.”

“I wish I could say that wasn’t me, or that I don’t actually think those things. But it was me, and I do think those things. It’s like, I can’t tell where I end and he begins. And when you’re that close to someone, if you hate yourself, you come to hate them too.” She chewed on the drawstring of her hoodie. “This is so hard. What would you do?”

“I’m really not the best person to ask. Last time I had a problem, I sold my life’s work and bought a run-down mansion in the farthest corner of the country.”

“Big mood.”

Elsa didn’t know what that meant, but she hoped it was a compliment. 

“I think my plane crashed,” Anna said, “and this is some weird purgatory, and you’re an angel giving me moral tests so I can get into heaven.”

“That’s improbable.” 

She turned her face to the pillow. Muffled, she said, “If I were at work, this would be so easy.”

“How do you solve problems at work?”

She counted off on her fingers. “Research solutions. Make an executable action plan. Delegate responsibilities. Get shit done.”

“Why can’t you apply that method here?”

“You don’t think it’s weird, tackling this like a business problem?”

“Maybe, but if it works, it works.”

Anna seemed to consider it, then a metaphorical light bulb went on above her head. She sat up straight. “Thank you, guardian business angel. You’re a genius.”

* * *

Elsa and Kristoff were halfway through _ The Phantom Menace, _ which Kristoff assured her was bad but extremely necessary in understanding the _ Star Wars _universe “because of midichlorians,” he said, whatever that meant. (“Why is there so much phallic imagery?” she asked, and Kristoff said, “There’s not —” but then he squinted, the film paused on a frame in which a ship clearly possessed a shaft-and-testical-like shape.) 

Anna returned, looking as solemn and professional as a person can look in a pink hoodie with a spot of chocolate on her mouth.

Kristoff licked his thumb and scrubbed it off. A sweet, strange display of affection, Elsa thought.

“Thank you, honey,” Anna said, and to the both of them, “I have something I’d like to say.”

“Go for it, babe,” Kristoff said, seeming to forget that she might be about to divorce him.

“None of our hands are clean in this. Kristoff, I’m very sorry for the way I’ve treated you, and the cruel things I’ve said and done. And I’m sorry for making out with Hans and not telling you I had a work-crush on him.”

“It’s okay,” he said quickly, with a dismissive wave of his hand.

“It’s not okay. Not even a little. I know you’re quick to forgive, but right now you shouldn’t be. You need to think about what you want from your life. Just yours, not mine. We all have a lot of decisions to make, and we need to take time to make the right ones.” She took a long breath, and declared: “I have thus sent several emails.”

“Oh, god,” Kristoff said.

“After much consideration and many emergency approvals, I will be taking next week off.”

Kristoff’s mouth fell open.

“Are you going somewhere?” Elsa asked.

“No. I’ll be staying here. With both of you. Joining whatever it is you do.”

“That’s it?” Kristoff asked. “You just want to hang out with us?”

“Yes.”

“You’re not divorcing me.”

“No.”

“You’re not plotting our murder.”

“Not yet.”

“What happens at the end of the week?” Elsa asked.

Kristoff didn’t seem to have thought that far ahead. “Yeah. What happens when the week is up?”

“I thought we could spend a few days together, just until Thanksgiving, then some time apart to think. Just a couple days. I’ll be staying at my parents’ house. And then when I get back, I thought we could schedule a meeting to, you know, talk.”

Something seemed to beat between them that Elsa couldn’t pick up.

“Really?” Kristoff asked. “You’re honestly considering —”

“I’m keeping an open mind,” Anna said.

“I’m sorry, what?” Elsa asked.

“Nothing,” they both said at the same time. Then Anna saw the television and said, “Is that _ The Phantom Menace_? I was Queen Amidala for Halloween three years in a row.” She plunked down on the couch beside Elsa, and Kristoff unpaused the film.

* * *

There was a knock on Elsa’s door while she was still dead asleep. It was dark outside, barely after seven in the morning. She slung a bathrobe on and threw her hair in a bun. On her doorstep stood Anna, grinning, a paper bag of what looked like breakfast in hand, and behind her, Kristoff, looking tired and somewhat embarrassed on her behalf. 

“We know it’s early,” Kristoff said. 

“I was just really excited,” Anna added.

In the kitchen, Kristoff plated the food while Elsa started the coffee. They’d apparently woken up early enough to get the good pastries at the bakery: the cheese danish Elsa liked, a chocolate one for Anna, and a slice of carrot cake for Kristoff that the baker always made specifically for him. Anna was busy walking around the house offering a periodic “whoa.” 

They sat at the marble kitchen island Kristoff had installed two weeks prior. Elsa was barely awake enough to eat her pastry. Anna’s hair was pinned in a complicated series of braids, and she was wearing what appeared to be her best impression of her husband’s work attire — boots, jeans, and a flannel shirt. Kristoff was in his most tattered henley, torn slightly at the collar, and looked like he hadn’t even had time to run a comb through his hair. Elsa imagined Anna had dragged him eagerly through his morning ritual. 

“Okay, so what’s the plan today?” Anna asked. “Are we installing electrical? Fixing plumbing? Hauling heavy items to and fro?”

“Painting,” Kristoff said. “We’re just painting.”

Anna visibly deflated.

“You can help me pick out bathroom fixtures,” Elsa offered.

Anna perked up again. “I’m very good at decorating.”

Three hours later, Elsa learned that Anna was not, in fact, good at decorating. She wanted every room to look like a little girl’s princess bedroom, which would have been great if Elsa were a little girl who wanted a princess bedroom. Still, Anna brought a renewed vigor to the house, and flitted between Elsa and Kristoff like a hummingbird. Elsa could hear her ask Kristoff dozens of questions, which he answered with unerring patience. 

“What can I do?” was the predominant question of the day. Elsa and Kristoff gave her small tedious tasks that took up a lot of time. By mid-morning, however, she seemed to have gotten bored with the whole ordeal.

Elsa was in her office, at her new desk which overlooked the ocean. Anna spun around in the spare swivel chair, opening and closing Kristoff’s phone. The sun was out but the wind blew hard, and leaves from the nearby wood skated across the sand. The house had something of a draft and the furnace was still semi-broken, so Anna was curled up in Kristoff’s Carhartt, looking, Elsa thought, unfairly cute.

“Why don’t you just hire a team of people to do all this for you?” Anna asked.

“I did hire a team of people,” Elsa replied, attempting to untangle via email a dispute that had popped up between Home Depot and one of her contractors regarding the purchase and delivery of an electrical dryer for a gas outlet, which should not have been so complicated, especially considering Elsa didn’t know how to do laundry in the first place. Despite her dedication to being more self-sufficient, she strongly suspected she would continue using a professional laundry service. 

“I mean like, a commercial company with a hundred builders to get it done in a couple days, while you stay in a hotel. Like remodeling shows.” While leafing through Elsa’s decoration notes, she added disparagingly, “With professional designers.” 

“I wanted to do something myself for a change.”

“Fair,” Anna said. “Just seems like a lot of work.”

“Work isn’t always bad.”

“It is when it’s all you’ve ever done.”

Elsa was still distracted by the email situation. Tactlessly she said, “Well then, stop.”

It took a long moment to realize Anna had gone silent. Elsa looked up to find her watching the ocean, stone-faced, Kristoff’s phone closed in her hand.

Elsa was always hurting people. First the world, then all of her employees, then her neighbors’ marriage, and now this. She couldn’t seem to avoid causing pain wherever she went. “Did I say something wrong?”

“Not all of us have the option to give up,” Anna said. “I still have a mortgage to pay. Student loans. Car loans. Credit cards. I don’t know if he’s mentioned this, but all Kristoff pays for is food and utilities. That’s how he decides how much work to take on every month, just enough to cover those two things. It’s never once occurred to him to work more and put some in savings, or pitch in on the other stuff.”

It was good to finally get an alternate perspective of Kristoff, whom Elsa obviously had been seeing through rose-colored glasses. At this point, however, it would take nothing short of an admission of homicide to make her fall out of love with him. And even then, she would give him the benefit of the doubt. It seemed a grave oversight for him to only work the bare minimum, when his wife was doing so much to support their household. 

“I think in his mind,” Anna continued, “it’s fair, because he does the cooking and cleaning and stuff. And I’d make as much money as I make anyway because I’m salaried. So, I get it. I don’t think making him work more will make either of us happier. I just wish he could understand the stress I’m under.”

Elsa’s checkbook was in her drawer, just inches from her hand. One check and all these problems would go away. But she knew it wasn’t the right time, if ever there would be a right time. 

“Do you think, if money weren’t an issue, you and Kristoff would still have problems?”

Anna whistled. “Pun only sort of intended, that’s the million-dollar question. I think even if I didn’t have a job, or I only worked part-time or something, I’d still be restless. I want to _ do _things, big things, but I want those things to be on my terms and within my means.”

“What does that look like?”

“First, I’d take a long, long, long break. Recover from burnout, if that’s possible. Then, start fresh doing something I really want to do.”

“And what about Kristoff?”

Anna spun in her chair. “I can’t make him want more for himself. It’s hard for me to understand not having ambition. Maybe what he wants from life doesn’t have to be my business, you know? We don’t have to be on the same path. We only have to figure out how to make our paths lead in the same direction.” She made it around and faced Elsa again. “I don’t know, I think even if I deal with my burnout, and find something I really want to do, and accept that Kristoff is a homebody — something is still missing. He’s spent his entire life juggling pieces of me. I’ve always felt like I’m his full-time job.”

“There are worse fates than devoting your life to someone you love.” Elsa tried to imagine her mother having this conversation, how uncomfortable she’d be with Anna’s openness. Just yesterday Elsa was considering imminent death by fire poker, and now Anna was baring her soul. It should have been frightening, but instead Elsa found it deeply refreshing. 

“And sometimes I think —” Anna began. “Sorry, this sounds horrible, please don’t repeat it. Sometimes I think he’s not enough for me. I don’t mean good enough, I mean.” She lifted her hands and spread them apart. “_Enough_. I’ve always wanted more than he can give me. I’ve always wanted more than _ I _can give me.” 

Anna spun another full rotation in the chair, and said casually, as if she had not dropped a huge bomb of admission about her marriage, “Is it time for lunch yet?”

* * *

The washer and dryer set, which were supposed to have been delivered and installed that day, was delayed by an entire week, to Elsa’s secret relief. One more week of pretending she _ had _ to send out her laundry. Having no other pending obligations, it was Anna who suggested they take a day trip on Tuesday. The plan was to wake up early and head to Ahtohallan, an hour-plus drive and short ferry ride away. When Elsa came over, though, she found Kristoff pacing back and forth across the kitchen. He was on the phone, spewing a lot of construction jargon.

“It’s one of his guys,” Anna explained. She was dressed for the occasion — skinny jeans, ankle boots, a stylish brown top beneath a heavy tartan scarf. Her hair was down, the first time Elsa had seen it that way, long and curled in loose ringlets. The boots made her as tall as Elsa.

Kristoff hung up and looked scornfully into the distance. “That was Oaken. There’s a welding job in the Isles.”

“And you’re taking it,” Anna said.

“Of course I’m taking it.”

“Is it for the money? Or because Oaken will be disappointed if you don’t?”

He leveled a glare at her. “You know the answer to that.”

“You always do this.”

“Always?” he said. “Name one time I canceled on you.”

“Senior prom.”

He threw his hands up. “Oh my god.”

To Elsa, Anna said, “He tore his ACL.”

“Doing what?” Elsa asked.

“Stealing third.” She made a jarring hand gesture. “Shortstop ran right into him.”

“I haven’t had enough coffee for this,” Kristoff said, and went to pour himself a cup. Elsa could sense they had more they wanted to say, but kept their tongues bitten in her company. As it was, Anna was staring him down while he pointedly ignored her, and it seemed as though they were yelling at each other telepathically. Elsa didn’t think it was a big deal, but she could understand Anna’s frustration. Then again, having spent the past few weeks with Kristoff and his guys, she could also understand his desire not to disappoint them. Theirs was a brotherhood of mutual support and traded favors. A simple “no, I have to hang out with my wife because we’re on the brink of divorce” could have an insidious impact on his business. Next time Oaken needed some guys for a job, Kristoff would no longer be at the top of the list. 

“Why don’t we have a girl’s day out?” Elsa suggested.

Kristoff turned around and stared at her as if she’d said something scandalous. “Really?”

Anna also looked surprised, and a little star-struck, as she periodically did, like she sometimes forgot and then immediately remembered who Elsa was. “Really?”

“Why are you surprised?”

“Because you like him, not me.”

A shadow of guilt crossed Kristoff’s face which Anna seemed to miss. Elsa threaded her arm into Anna’s and said, “That’s not true at all. Let me prove it to you.”

The day began with a long drive in which Anna kept pushing buttons in Elsa’s Tesla, and repeating the phrase “Elsa’s Tesla” over and over like a tongue twister. When she got bored, she started asking questions about Elsa’s life, particularly Fjord Lumber, which — given the peaceful drive and Anna’s knowledge of business operations and their shortcomings — Elsa was surprisingly comfortable talking about. It wasn’t like talking with Kristoff, who seemed too innocent to understand the inherent evils of power. But Anna understood them well.

Ahtohallan was an upscale tourist town on a harbor. Rich people parked their yachts there, and there was always at least one wedding happening. You couldn’t buy a meal for under forty dollars. It was basically an outdoor mall with a view of the mountains. Shamefully Elsa adored it.

They had breakfast at a little bistro, where Anna harshly critiqued the pancakes, which weren’t pancakes at all, but crepes, “a bastardization of the best food.” Then they went into the shops along the harbor and Elsa told her she could buy anything she wanted. She meant _ anything, _as in, all the things she wanted, but Anna took it to mean one single thing, and spent the day picking items up and saying, “Are you the thing I want most?” It was so cute, and seemed to give Anna such a sense of purpose and delight, that Elsa did not correct her. 

“I want this,” Anna said in a handmade glass and ceramics shop. It was a small figurine of a reindeer that was priced at a modest twenty-five dollars. “For Kristoff.”

“We’ll get this for Kristoff,” Elsa said, “but I want you to pick out something for yourself, too.”

“Things for Kristoff are for me.”

“When was the last time you did something nice for yourself? Just you, not him.”

“You sound just like him. He’s all, ‘self-care is political warfare,’ which I would believe if he didn’t use it to explain why we need a hot tub.”

“Do you want a hot tub? I’ll buy you a hot tub.”

“Elsa. You’re not my sugar mama.”

Elsa raised an eyebrow. The tips of Anna’s ears turned red and she hid her face behind her hand. “Oh my god, stop it.”

“I know what you need,” Elsa said, and steered her toward the door.

Twenty minutes later, Elsa was signing the credit card slip for a three-hour spa treatment, which included a mani-pedi, facial, mud wrap, and massage. In her old life, Elsa had a masseuse come to her penthouse twice a week. Anna admitted she’d never had a massage before, or had even been to a spa, and had a mani-pedi only once when she was a bridesmaid in a friend’s wedding. She seemed to enjoy it, based on all the adorable noises she made throughout the afternoon. Elsa had intended to earn Anna’s love, not buy it, but throwing a little money around certainly didn’t hurt, and gifts seemed to be a surprisingly efficient way into her heart.

“I feel like I’m made of liquid,” Anna said as they left the spa. It was getting late, and they’d have to hurry to catch the ferry back to the mainland. “Is this what non-stressed people feel like all the —” She stopped abruptly and looked into the window of a book shop. Before Elsa could stop her, she ducked inside.

Elsa sighed and followed. The store had dozens of aisles, with shelves that stretched all the way to the ceiling. Books teetered in tall stacks on the floor, and a chubby orange cat was asleep in an old chair. Anna began weaving through the stacks, two books already in hand, although Elsa hadn’t seen where she’d gotten them.

Elsa’s phone rang. It was Kristoff. “Hello?”

“Anna’s not answering her phone.”

Down the far side of the literary fiction section, Anna picked up a particularly old book and said, “You look like you’re in need of a good home.”

“She’s preoccupied,” Elsa said.

“Bookstore?”

“Yep.”

“Okay, well, let her know I’m not making it home tonight. Job took longer than expected. Sven and I will head back first thing in the morning.”

“We might not make it home, either.”

“Miss the ferry?”

“About to.”

“That’s very old-Anna of her.”

“Does that mean she’s happy?”

“Sounds like it.” He paused. “What about you?”

Anna was now petting the cat, who had woken up presumably to greet the new customers. “What a chonk and handsome boy you are,” she said. “You remind me of my husband.”

“Yeah,” Elsa said. “I am.”

* * *

They stayed in the bookstore until close, going through each aisle, pulling book after book and asking, “Have you read this one?” then summarizing its contents to one another. Anna could make Elsa laugh harder than anyone else, harder than Elsa knew she could laugh — tears in her eyes as she struggled to breathe — and they were so loud that several patrons gave them dirty looks. They left the store with almost more books than they could carry, definitely more than either of them had time to read. They walked arm-in-arm down the harbor, Christmas lights strung up from post to post while dozens of anchored boats floated in the calm water. It was night now, and it had begun to snow, thick flakes that caught in their hair and eyelashes, and which melted the moment they touched the ground. 

They passed a restaurant whose menu was in the window. Elsa recommended they eat there, but Anna noticed the prices and said absolutely not, let’s find someplace cheaper, but Elsa knew there was no place cheaper, and dragged her in anyway. Anna looked embarrassed to be wearing a casual outfit in what was clearly an upscale place, but Elsa assured her that no one would care. The host asked if they had a reservation, and when Elsa said they didn’t, he snobbily said it was reservation-only. Elsa handed over her old business card with the iconic Fjord logo, a green upward-pointing arrow with a brown line down the middle.

“My sincerest apologies, Ms. Fjord,” he said. “Please, follow me.” He led them upstairs to what appeared to be an empty party room, with a view of the glittering harbor and the snow-tipped mountains in the distance.

As soon as he had gone, Anna asked, “You can just do that? Show your business card and get whatever you want?”

Elsa glanced over the prix fixe menu. “More or less.”

“This is going to cost over a hundred dollars,” Anna said. She turned a page on the menu and her eyes went wide. “Two hundred dollars.”

The chef arrived at their table and shook Elsa’s hand. He was a large man with a Boston accent. “Very good meeting you, Miss Fjord. Happy to make whatever you want.”

Elsa ordered the house wine and the prix fixe, and when the chef looked to Anna, she said, “I’ll have the same?”

Once the chef had gone, Anna said, “This is unreal. I’m so sad Kristoff’s not here.” Then she glanced around and added, “Okay, maybe not here-here. He’d hate this place. He’d go get pizza and bring it back or something. Oh god, and he would have hated the spa stuff, too. And the shopping. And the books. And all the walking. Wow, never mind, I’m totally glad he didn’t come.”

A server returned for their wine service, which Anna watched with sincere confusion. When he left, she asked, “Isn’t this a three-hundred-dollar bottle?”

“Who knows,” Elsa said. “Drink as much as you want.”

Together they went through two bottles of wine across four courses of their meal. Anna kept making those cute pleased noises Elsa had grown to love, and at the end, she ate her dessert as well as Elsa’s. Gesturing with her fork, with a spot of raspberry at the corner of her mouth, Anna asked, “Can I say something irredeemably horrible?”

Elsa nodded eagerly.

“Hans was such a bad kisser. Like, _ bad_.”

“Bad how?”

She stuck her wine-purple tongue out all the way and wriggled it around like a tentacle. 

“Oh,” Elsa said.

“Yeah. He was even bad at cuddling. Like, how can anyone be bad at cuddling? He just never shut up. And he complained all the time, about everything. At first I liked him because of how critical he was, you know? Which, I know, super immature, grown-ass woman seeking validation from a man who honestly believes _ The Dark Knight _ is the greatest movie ever made.” She took another bite of crème brûlée, having established a pattern of eating one bite of each of her desserts in a clockwise rotation. “He’s like that guy I _ should _have made a mistake with in college, but I didn’t make any mistakes until — well, Hans. So when he came along, I didn’t know better. He was just this confident smarmy asshole who withheld his affection to keep my attention. The entire time I was making out with him, I was thinking, ‘I miss my husband.’”

Elsa was trying hard to maintain polite composure, but inwardly she wanted to demand every minute detail. “Can I ask what happened?”

“It really was just the one time. A business conference. Open bar. I invited him to my room and suddenly his tentacle — I mean, tongue — was in my mouth. I should have pushed him off, but Kris and I just had an argument about something so stupid I can’t even remember it. And I knew I’d get home and he’d still be mad at me, and it just felt like the entire world was against me. And here was this vaguely attractive dude who could make me feel slightly less shitty for a night.” She pointed her fork at Elsa. “He’s a dickweasel, but I give him props. He went to take off my shirt, I said no, and he didn’t try anything else the rest of the night.”

“And when did you break things off?”

“Next morning. He had his head in the toilet and I told him it couldn’t happen anymore. He waved me off and we never brought it up again.”

“You still work with him?”

“He’s in PR. Whole other floor. I only see him during conferences and in the break room.” She took another bite, this one contemplatively. “I wanted to tell Kris about it as soon as I got home. I was ready for a fight, ready to grovel, do whatever I had to do. But when I got home, he had this cake. Three tiers. Pink icing with raspberry in the middle. And it said ‘welcome home.’ It was the ugliest thing I’d ever seen, but it tasted so good. I started crying, like straight-up sobbing, and he was so confused. He held me for hours, kept asking me what was wrong, but I couldn’t tell him. It sounds so stupid when I say it out loud, but I just couldn’t bring myself to hurt him. Are you ready for the worst part?”

Elsa nodded, all attempts at nonchalance gone.

“When I came home and saw him with you, part of me, a big part, was relieved. Finally, the perfect, righteous Kristoff had fucked up. And I was angry and confused and — excited, kind of, because at least it was something different. Something I’d remember in one, two, ten years. Is that awful? Does that make me a bad person, that I was happy my husband had fallen in love with someone else just because it’s interesting?”

“I don’t think so,” Elsa said.

“I left that night, not because I was mad at you guys, but because I saw something ugly in myself, and I couldn’t cope. But now, the more I think about it." She tilted her empty glass toward Elsa. “You might be the best thing that’s ever happened to us.”

* * *

By the end of the meal, Anna was a bit tipsy. Maybe more than tipsy. On their way out, Elsa stopped to thank the chef, which led to a short conversation about what other places they should see while they were in town. Beside her, Anna was drunkenly tapping the lobster tank and saying, “I’m sorry I ate your brother.”

“We should be going,” Elsa said to the chef. “Thanks again.” Then she steered Anna out of the restaurant.

“Today has been so fun!” Anna shouted once they were outside. “Best! Day! Ever!” She seemed to notice finally that it had gotten dark out. “Oh no, we missed the ferry, didn’t we?”

Elsa might have been a bit tipsy, too, but she was better at hiding it. “We missed the ferry hours ago, sweetheart.”

“‘Sweetheart,’” Anna said, as if trying the word out on her tongue. “I like that. Keep calling me that. And other things.”

“Like what?”

“Kristoff calls me babe, and I call him honey, so not those. That leaves —” She ticked them off on her fingers. “Love, darling, pumpkin, sugar, muffin, basically any dessert or gourd.”

“You want me to call you all those things?”

“Yes. All the time. Did you know I am a bisexual?”

Elsa forced down her smile. “No, I didn’t.”

“I’m surprised Kristoff didn’t tell you. Maybe he forgot. I had a girlfriend once. In college.”

“Yeah?”

“I liked her a lot. And she liked me a lot.”

“What happened?”

She wrinkled her nose. “I liked Kristoff more, even though he’s a dumb smelly boy. It’s fine. She moved to LA. Yuck.” She looked around and appeared to notice they were going in the opposite direction of the parking garage. “Wait. Where are we going?”

“A hotel. Unless you want to sleep in the Tesla.”

“Esla’s Telsa!”

Thankfully the chef had recommended a hotel just a block away. It was as upscale as the restaurant had been — gold plating and mirrors, ornate rugs, an unnerving number of ferns. Anna looked up at the chandelier and said, “Whoa.”

“Stay here,” Elsa said, setting her on a cushy-looking armchair in the lobby. “I’m going to get us some rooms.”

Anna caught her arm. “Rooms?”

“Yes. One for you and one for me.”

She shook her head. “Too expensive. One room. We can share.” Just as Elsa was about to argue, she added, “Did you know I’m good at sharing? I am _ very _good at sharing.”

“That’s...good?” Elsa said, confused. “I’ll be right back.”

Of course there were no more doubles available. The concierge apologized repeatedly. Elsa glanced back at Anna, who was no longer in her chair, but taking what looked like dozens of pictures of the chandelier. 

“A single is fine,” Elsa said. 

In the elevator, Anna slid next to Elsa and held her phone up. “A selfie for Kristoff. To show him how much fun we’re having.”

They smiled, pressed cheek to cheek. Anna took the shot and texted Kristoff, which seemed to take all of her concentration. When Elsa beeped them into the room, Anna lowered her phone and said, “Whoa,” immediately pressing her face to the open window. It was the same view as the restaurant, but Anna seemed to have forgotten about it in the short interim between dinner and now. She swept her gaze around the room, which was far more modern-looking than the lobby had been, all white linens and clean lines, and an enormous television across from the single king-sized bed.

Upon seeing the bed, Anna’s ears went red again. “Oh.”

Elsa tugged at Anna’s coat and slid it off her arms. “Problem, pumpkin?”

“No problem, lemon square. Will you excuse me just a moment?”

She slipped out of the room. Elsa sat on the bed and texted Kristoff, _ Don’t worry, I’ll keep my hands to myself. _

Anna returned moments later and went straight to the bathroom. Kristoff replied, _ lol good luck. _

_ What is that supposed to mean? _

_ Nothing ;) _

“What does _ that _mean?” Elsa asked her phone.

Anna emerged from the bathroom and asked in a sing-song voice, “Do you want to watch a movie?”

It was far too early to sleep, but they turned off the lights and climbed into bed, and spent the next hour scrolling through movie options, which became an extension of their earlier book conversation, except far more one-sided. Elsa had read a lot but hadn’t seen very many films, at least not in comparison to Anna and Kristoff, whose relationship appeared somewhat to revolve around them. They decided on _ Silver Linings Playbook _ which Anna said was one of her favorites, and which Elsa thought she had seen, but when it started she realized she was thinking of the 1949 film _ Look for the Silver Lining_. 

Not even ten minutes in, Anna said, “I wish we’d brought pajamas. I don’t want to sleep in jeans.”

“Then don’t,” Elsa said.

“You really don’t care?”

“Why would I?”

Under the covers, Anna slid off her jeans and discarded them on the floor. She also appeared to take off her bra and tug it through the sleeve of her top, but Elsa wasn’t sure, as she was trying very hard to feign disinterest. She had no need to take off her clothes, considering she was wearing fleece-lined leggings and her most comfortable bra which were perfectly fine to sleep in. 

As the movie continued, Anna proceeded to shift subtly closer, until eventually she was curled up against Elsa. It might have been the fading wine-drunkenness, but it all felt so easy. One minute Anna was on the other side of the bed, and the next she had her head pillowed on Elsa’s chest, while Elsa stroked her hair idly. She told herself this was just a thing girls did when they watched movies together, despite having gone to an all-girls boarding school where she did not, in fact, do anything like this. By the end of the movie, Anna’s legs were tangled in Elsa’s, and they were holding hands again, fingers interlaced. For once Anna wasn’t babbling to fill the silence or fidgeting. For a second Elsa thought she might have been asleep, but then she said, very quietly, “He said this was okay.”

“You asked?”

“Mhm.”

Elsa wanted to know more, namely, what exactly was decided between them? But she was too tired for that conversation.

Anna looked up at her. “Do you think every day could be like this?”

“We probably shouldn’t drink this much wine every day. Or buy that many books.”

“I mean, generally. Just being and doing. The way we are, right now. Maybe this is what life should be.”

Elsa curled a strand of hair behind Anna’s ear. “I think so too.”

* * *

When Kristoff returned home around noon the following day, Anna was asleep, her head pillowed on Elsa’s lap, while Elsa read a book. It had been a long and quiet drive home from Ahtohallan.

“Hungover?” Kristoff asked, draping his coat over a chair.

Elsa turned the page. “Yep.”

“Pancakes, please,” Anna muttered, and held up three fingers.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning this chapter for some drunken (but consensual!) shenanigans.

Wednesday afternoon, Anna received a work call and holed up in her room putting out bureaucratic fires, which left Elsa and Kristoff in the kitchen to prep for Thanksgiving. It was to be held at Kristoff’s grandparents’ house. When Kristoff had initially invited Elsa, she declined, figuring he was only being polite, but he insisted, and then Anna insisted, and Elsa couldn’t manage to say no. So she was going to their family Thanksgiving, and the panic had already set in.

“What if they know?” She was perched on a stool, a glass of wine in hand though it was only three in the afternoon. But Kristoff had opened a beer at noon, so she figured they were on holiday time.

Kristoff ran his pinky across the surface of a gooey spoon and sucked it into his mouth, some kind of filling for one of the many pie crusts chilling in the fridge. “Know what?” 

“About us.”

“How would they know?”

He was looking at her the way teenage girls look at their favorite musician — dreamy-eyed, with a slight head tilt and an unabashed smile. It was, she realized now, the way he’d always looked at her. She was an idiot for not figuring it out sooner. He had a couple smudges of flour on his face, and her affection for him swelled suddenly. She found it difficult to keep her polite distance. Constantly she imagined kissing him, or being kissed by him, which was nothing new, but now she dreamed of it with Anna present and encouraging them, which opened a whole new avenue for guilt.

“You don’t hold your cards that close to your chest,” Elsa said.

“Then we’re in luck they’re not very observant.”

“What if they don’t like me?”

“You’re impossible not to like.”

She waved it off as lovesick flattery, which she pretended to detest but in fact collected to recount later, usually the dead of night when her misdeeds most haunted her. 

“Won’t they think it’s weird, me going to your Thanksgiving instead of my own?” she asked.

“Tell them you don’t believe in celebrating indigenous genocide. They’ll stop asking questions.”

“Kris,” she said. “You’re not being helpful.”

He sprinkled flour onto the counter. The sleeves of his sweater were pushed up to his elbows. “Come here. Help me with the rolls. Can’t have social anxiety when you’re kneading dough.”

“Excuse you,” Elsa said, sliding off the stool to wash her hands. “I can have social anxiety through any activity.”

She returned to him just as he was tilting the dough out of the bowl. It was unpleasantly gooey, but he didn’t hesitate sinking his hands into it. 

“Flour up,” he said, and she patted the small hills of flour on the counter. Even that was exciting, the grainy texture on her hands which she usually kept immaculate. Her mother used to tell her that hands could tell you everything you needed to know about someone. Kristoff’s were wide and rough, always stained with something — dirt or paint or oil, or covered in flour with dried flecks of dough between his fingers. He was a man who had to touch things to understand them, who interacted with his world by movement. His emotions were big and blunt, slow beasts that trudged through him, so unlike Anna, who expressed thousands of tiny feelings per day. And her hands proved it: small and stubby, nails bitten to the quick, months-old polish chipped into splotches. 

“Now what?” Elsa asked. 

Kristoff settled behind her. His voice was close by her ear, quiet. “Here.” He took her hand and together they folded the lump over on itself. It wasn’t as gross-feeling as she’d expected, but it stuck to her fingers unpleasantly. Then he took her other hand and did it again in the opposite direction. They moved back and forth, left to right, working together as they built a steady rhythm. He was pressed against her back, and she thought again of the night he’d bent his wife over this very counter for Elsa to witness. 

Kneading was harder than she anticipated; soon, her arms grew sore, but the slow change in the dough encouraged her. No longer did it stick to her fingers but to itself, smoothing out like clay. He let her continue on her own, and she thought he might step away, but instead his hands found her hips and his lips settled against the crook of her neck.

“Kris,” Elsa said, attempting to sound disapproving, but the word broke in her mouth. She was not used to him being so bold, especially with Anna just upstairs. 

“Remember that night?” he asked, tugging the loose collar of her shirt off her shoulder.

She nodded, and had a hard time staying focused on the task at hand.

“I wish you could have been there with us.” He continued peppering her neck with kisses, and she could not find it in her to tell him to stop. “You know what got her to give in?”

Elsa shook her head.

“I kissed her right here.” He pressed a light kiss below her ear. Elsa couldn’t tell if it was a sensitive spot on everyone, or if the feeling was enhanced solely because she now knew Anna’s reaction to it. Either way, she feared her knees might give out. She gripped the counter to steady herself.

“What,” Elsa began tentatively. “What else does she like?”

He slipped under her shirt and dug his thumbs firmly into the muscles of her lower back. She bit her lip to keep from crying out. “Rub her back, she falls asleep.”

She imagined getting undressed later and finding streaks of flour in the shape of his fingers on her body. “What else?”

“She’s ticklish right —” He slid his fingertips gently down the slope of her hips. “Here.” Elsa found herself mindlessly opening her legs, pushing back against him, and though he tread dangerously close, he stopped just shy of the place she wanted him to touch most.

A moan threatened to escape her, but she quickly stifled it against her wrist. Upstairs, she could hear Anna speaking sternly to someone on the phone.

His hand slid up her back and settled into the hair at the nape of her neck. He gripped it in his fist, pulling just hard enough to make her gasp, her neck exposed to him. 

“Does she like this, too?” she asked, strained.

“No,” he said, his teeth grazing her neck, “but I thought you might.”

“Oh. My. God,” Anna said from upstairs, bedroom door slamming shut. Elsa could hear her footsteps as she came closer to the stairwell, still out of sight but talking nonetheless. “I work with idiots. Complete fucking morons.”

Kristoff stepped away from Elsa and turned on the tap. Elsa sunk her shaking hands back into the dough, all strength from her arms gone. She could only roll it pitifully from side to side.

“You’re making her bake bread? She’s our guest.” Anna picked up Elsa’s wine and drank the rest of it, then poured another glass. 

“She wanted to help,” Kristoff said, seemingly unaffected by what had just happened.

“Are you okay?” Anna asked Elsa. “You’re all red.”

“Kneading is hard,” Elsa said, but her voice sounded weak. 

“You’re telling me.” Anna pulled at Elsa’s elbow. “Let him do all the hard stuff. Come watch TV with me.” She dragged Elsa to the living room and grabbed the wine bottle on her way. They settled on the couch in what had quickly come to be their usual formation — Anna lying against her, Elsa’s arm around her shoulders. As Anna turned on the TV and began flipping channels, Elsa glanced up at Kristoff. He was watching them, bottom lip bitten between his teeth, looking very amused.

* * *

Elsa’s phone vibrated on her nightstand. She knew it was Anna or Kristoff asking where she was, more likely both of them in the group chat they’d started. She had agreed to meet them at their house at noon, but it was nearing ten after and Elsa couldn’t decide which earrings to wear with what necklace. Five minutes later, she heard the door downstairs unlock and open, and deeply regretted letting Kristoff make himself a key. Then again, she figured, he was a locksmith; he could just break in. She had assumed only one of them arrived to retrieve her, but it was both of them.

“What’s taking so long?” Anna asked from the doorway.

“You’ve never been late to anything, ever, in your life,” Kristoff said.

Elsa stepped warily out of her closet. They both looked her up and down with the same stunned look.

“Damn,” Anna said. “You look super hot.”

Kristoff elbowed her. 

“What? It’s true.”

“That doesn’t mean you have to say it.” To Elsa, Kristoff said, “You do look very nice, but it might be a bit much.”

Elsa had chosen a cocktail dress that she should have referred to by its designer’s name, who had made it just for her, but she couldn’t remember it. It was navy blue and strapless, and she wore it with white Louboutin heels. 

She looked down at herself. “This was how I dressed for family dinners.”

“Okay,” Anna said, pushing up her sleeves. “Let’s figure this out.”

She and Kristoff both shoved past Elsa into the closet and began sorting through their options. “What about this?” Kristoff said, holding a top and bottoms against himself, to which Anna said, “That’s a track suit.” She flipped it around. It said JUICY on the butt in rhinestones. “Why do you own this?”

“I like sparkly things,” Elsa said, twirling her hair around her fingers.

After much debate, they decided on a cable-knit sweater, jeans, and boots. 

“I can’t wear _ jeans _ to _ dinner_,” Elsa said. “I’m not an animal.”

But Anna was already tugging down the zipper on Elsa’s dress, and Kristoff had knelt down to take her shoes off. 

“Okay, okay, fine,” Elsa said. “Leave me alone. I can dress myself.”

A few minutes later, she met Anna and Kristoff in the driveway, dressed in the outfit they’d picked out, with her hair done in a loose braid and what she hoped looked like modest jewelry. She’d brought several bottles of wine from her stores since she hadn’t helped cook. 

“Oh hell yes,” Anna said when she saw the wine, and helped her secure it in the back. Elsa wanted to ask why they were squished into the bench seat of Kristoff’s truck when they could have taken the Tesla or even Anna’s Camry, but she found the cramped space, particularly sitting in the middle, oddly comforting.

“There are some things you should know,” Kristoff began. 

“Kristoff’s family is super weird,” Anna said. “They mean well, but there’s just — a lot.”

“A lot of what?” Elsa asked.

“People, for one,” Kristoff said. 

“Drama, for two,” Anna added.

“Like what?” Elsa asked.

Anna sighed. “Here we go.”

“Okay, so there’s Tom, my step brother,” Kristoff said. “He’s the tall guy with the red hair and freckles.”

“Not to be confused with Tim, Kris’ second-cousin, the tall guy with blondish-reddish hair and no freckles,” Anna said.

“And Tom just got out of jail.”

“For assaulting this dude at a bar.”

“_Allegedly _ assaulting a dude at a bar. He says it was self-defense. Anyway, Grandpabbi’s pretty pissed about it because he had to bail him out. Court date is in a couple weeks.”

“Oh wow,” Elsa said.

Anna reached across Elsa and patted Kristoff’s thigh. “Tell her about Melanie.”

“Melanie is my niece, my older sister’s oldest daughter. She’s seventeen, and very pregnant, but she hasn’t told anyone yet.”

“And so everyone is just ignoring it,” Anna said. “Ignoring this big waddling teenage girl like she’s just gained a little weight and they’re being polite not to mention it.”

“Someone has to have mentioned it,” Kristoff said. “Like she had to go to a doctor by now, right?”

“I think she doesn’t want to tell anyone because it’s Ben’s kid.”

“Oh come on, that’s gross.”

“Why?” Elsa asked.

“Ben is her step brother,” Kristoff said.

“Charlotte, that’s Kris’ sister,” Anna said, “had Melanie young and the dad was never in the picture. Then she got married to Stephen, who is just the best guy, but he has this really sad story —”

“His wife had a brain tumor. She wasn’t even thirty,” Kristoff explained.

“— and he had Ben, who was just a few months older than Mel, and they’ve been inseparable from the very beginning. They’re definitely in love, and that kid is definitely Ben’s, and everyone knows it but no one wants to _ know _it, you know?”

“I can imagine,” Elsa said.

Surely, she thought, that had to be it, but they continued piling on the family gossip and news. There were two different Johns, Big John and Little John, and it seemed as though everyone over the age of twenty-five had a child out of wedlock, spent time in prison, or had gotten divorced. After the twentieth new name, Elsa began losing track of who was who, whose allegiance was where, who hated whom but pretended to be polite, and who hated whom and refused to be in the same room together. 

When they arrived, the situation was far worse than Elsa had feared. They parked almost a quarter-mile away in a field, and dozens of cars were lined up on either side of the empty road. Kristoff carried six pies stacked on top of one another; Anna, a box of several dozen rolls; Elsa, the wine, which she had worried would be too much but could see now it wouldn’t begin to scratch the surface. The house was small, a ranch with a couple extensions branched off, and a barn out back. Inside was hot and smelled like a dozen different foods, and the place was stuffed with nearly a hundred people. Each wall was covered in dusty framed photographs and shelves laden with knick-knacks. An enormous Christmas tree sat in the living room, and a football game boomed on the television. Folding tables with plastic tablecloths were strewn about, lawn chairs circled around them. Children swerved between and around legs, chasing one another and screaming. In another room, a baby wailed. 

Elsa had been to hundreds of events where she hadn’t known anyone, but those were all formal. There was a script to follow, a pattern of quietude and politeness. You mingled, you asked a few impersonal questions, you excused yourself to chat with someone else. Caterers put food and drinks in your hand. Everyone already knew your name.

The moment Kristoff had set the pies down, a startlingly large man knocked him to the ground and they began wrestling. Elsa was alarmed until Anna said, “That’s his brother, Erik.” 

Before Elsa could ask more, an older woman said, “Anna!” and hugged her. The woman was wearing a red apron and her hair was grey and frazzled. Grandmabbi, she thought she’d heard Kristoff call her once. Anna introduced Elsa as her neighbor, and Elsa held out her hand to shake, but Grandmabbi scoffed at it and hugged her. It made her feel only marginally better. Anna dutifully introduced her to everyone who greeted them. It took nearly half an hour to pour themselves a glass of wine, and Kristoff was nowhere to be found.

After Elsa had given up trying to memorize everyone’s names and relationship to one another, she excused herself to get some fresh air. In the backyard, she found Kristoff playing football with a horde of children. 

“One day, maybe,” Anna said, suddenly beside her. “When things are less crazy.” Elsa wanted to hold her hand, an act which had seemed simple and innocent at home, but she realized in this place might be frowned upon, or, after hearing about the gossip of everyone else, speculated about for months to come. So she kept her hands to herself, and watched as Kristoff patiently showed a five-year-old boy how to place his fingers on football. The boy threw it, and it spiraled gracefully into the arms of an older boy, maybe ten. Kristoff cheered.

“I think you’d make great parents,” Elsa said.

“Do you want kids?”

“I haven’t put much thought into it.” She hadn’t planned to say more, but Anna’s silence made it clear she wanted her to continue. “My parents only had me so someone could take over the business. Until I sold it, I assumed I’d do the same.”

“And now?”

“I don’t know.” Kristoff caught a pass and fumbled intentionally before he reached the tree which was serving as a goal post. The kids piled on top of him. Elsa glanced at Anna, who was sipping a glass of white wine in a clear plastic cup. “But I wouldn’t want to do it alone.”

Grandmabbi poked her head out and beckoned them inside to grab some food. The meal was laid out buffet-style, and everyone ate on Dixie plates. Anna found an available card table in a sun room, and eventually Kristoff joined them, balancing three plates piled high and a pint of beer. His brother Erik followed, similarly laden. Erik was larger than Kristoff, blonder, his features sharper, with a neatly trimmed beard. He had a jolly disposition and regaled them with stories of the strange things he’d seen as a UPS driver. Elsa laughed along with Kristoff and Anna, her nerves ebbing the more she drank. Erik was an engaging storyteller and she found herself enrapt in his ethos as if watching an actor on stage. She glanced at her phone and realized that hours had passed; it was dark out now, and at some point Erik had put his arm across the back of her chair. She also realized that Anna and Kristoff were no longer with them. 

She interrupted Erik. “Where did they go?”

“Who?” Erik asked. 

“Anna and Kris.”

“Probably duking it out, as usual.”

“What do you mean?”

He shrugged. “Always fighting. Haven’t been happy in years. Anyway, so I chucked this dude over a fence, and he started rolling toward the highway —”

“Excuse me,” Elsa said. 

Upon standing, Elsa realized she’d had far more to drink than she thought. As she meandered through the house, she noticed attendance had dwindled. The men were drinking beer and watching football while most of the women were in the kitchen cleaning up, which irritated her — why couldn’t the men help? — but she felt like a hypocrite. All of her Thanksgivings were networking functions, professionally catered. 

She found Anna and Kristoff in a back room, what might have once been a bedroom but was now a storage space filled with large plastic bins stacked to the ceiling. She was just about to get their attention when she heard Anna say, “Not yet.”

“Then when?” Kristoff asked.

“We’re not teenagers anymore, Kris. We’re not in a hurry.”

“Did you see Erik? He’s about to eat her alive.”

Surely they weren’t talking about Elsa. It was probably someone they'd told her about earlier, whose name and circumstance had slipped her mind. Maybe Melanie, who indeed looked about to pop, and not a single person appeared to notice. 

“He wouldn’t,” Anna said.

“He would and he will. Erik fucks anything that makes eye contact with him. And Elsa is —”

“I know, okay. I just don’t want to lose her.”

Now they were definitely talking about her, but she still refused to believe it. Part of her knew she should either interrupt or walk away, but she was stuck to the spot. 

“We won’t,” Kristoff said. “She loves us.”

“She loves you.”

“She’s crazy about you.”

Kristoff was right. If they asked her right now who she loved more, she wouldn’t be able to decide. She couldn’t look at Kristoff without her heart rate elevating, without imagining his mouth against hers. And she couldn’t be in physical proximity to Anna without touching her, making her smile, letting her know that she was and always would be the center of Elsa’s attention. It felt as if they’d known each other all their lives.

“What if Erik is out there right now inviting her to his place?” Kristoff asked. “What if she says yes?”

“She wouldn’t.”

“I’ve seen Erik seduce a Playboy model with a PhD. I know Elsa’s out of all our leagues but I wouldn’t put it past him.”

“I still can’t believe any of this is happening.”

“It won’t be happening if we don’t make it happen.”

The football game was loud, and Elsa swore she misheard. What they were implying was something they couldn’t possibly be implying. They were married, and they had some problems, but they were working through those problems. Elsa had nothing to do with their relationship. 

“Okay,” Anna said. “You’re right. I’m just scared.”

“There you are,” Erik said, coming up behind Elsa and clapping her on the back. He walked past her into the storage room, a twenty-four-pack of beer in hand. “Come on, losers, let’s take this party back to your place.”

Elsa glanced guiltily at Anna and Kristoff, who both looked terrified at the prospect of being overheard. Before anything could be admitted, Erik ushered them all back into the kitchen, where he gathered the twenty- and thirty-something members of the family and initiated a caravan back to Anna and Kristoff’s place, which was an annual tradition neither of them had mentioned. He insisted that Elsa ride with him in his Suburban so as not to be cramped in Kristoff’s small truck, and because Elsa was not ready to confront what she’d overheard, she agreed. 

Erik was easy to be around. He opened every door for her, asked non-invasive questions, and guided discussion effortlessly. He kept asking if she was warm enough and adjusted the heat accordingly. He gave her his phone so she could pick out the music. Had she still owned her company, she probably would have offered him a job in sales. Despite Kristoff’s suspicions that Erik was trying to seduce her, he made no move toward it, and she took his flirting and kindness to be more an aspect of his personality than any attempt at bedding her. Then again, she was drunk, and lacked the experience to know for sure.

They'd stopped at a liquor store so they were the last to arrive. About a dozen people were in attendance, including some that Elsa didn’t recognize from dinner. Melanie was there, drinking a Diet Coke beside a short thin boy who was probably Ben. She looked impossibly young, buried in a Seahawks hoodie, with curly black hair and bright green eyes. Kristoff had turned on the football game while Anna was chatting with a circle of people in the kitchen. It was Erik who suggested shots. Elsa explained she’d never had a shot before, and Erik insisted she try at least one, so she did, and things got a bit hazy after that.

She found herself on the couch, leaning into Erik with his arm around her, while he told more stories. Sven was on her lap and she scratched behind his ears. In the kitchen, some kind of drinking game was happening. She’d lost track of Anna and Kristoff, and resentfully wondered if they were talking about her again. She wasn’t mad, but she was something. Apprehensive, maybe. It was clear they weren’t being totally honest with her, and she wished the party would end so she could talk with them properly about what she’d overheard. Then again, it was possible she completely misunderstood, and she’d make a fool of herself for asking.

She went to the bathroom and paused outside the door of the guest bedroom, open just a crack. Melanie and Ben were speaking in hushed voices. Elsa pulled all the cash out of her wallet and went inside. They both stared at her blankly, what she knew looked like a strange drunk woman ambling toward them holding almost a thousand dollars. Elsa took Melanie’s hand and put the money in it. “Buy a good car seat,” she said, and left.

Hours later, the house had grown uncomfortably hot. Elsa left to take a walk on the beach and drink a bottle of water. She hadn’t been this drunk in years, or maybe ever. Her emotions were like an animal let out of its cage, darting everywhere, uncontrollable. One moment she was devastated that Anna didn’t think she loved her as much as Kristoff; the next, overcome with desire, thinking about Kristoff touching her the way he touched Anna; and the next, her heart like a rabbit’s fluttering in her chest, the thrill of wondering if their conversation meant what she thought it meant, even though she knew, distantly, it couldn’t be true.

“Hey,” Erik said, running to catch up with her. “What’s the matter?”

She waved him off. “Overheated.”

“It’s cold as balls out here. You want my jacket?”

“I like the cold.”

Erik’s performative facade seemed to dissipate, and they walked silently for a time. Kristoff had spoken of his brother like he was a womanizing sleazeball, but Elsa thought Erik's success with women had more to do with his earnestness and easy confidence, his ability to read the room — traits that most men, in her experience, lacked. She thought he might try to grab her hand or put his arm around her, but he kept his distance. Eventually they headed back toward the house, but before they went inside, Erik crowded her against a wall. He was very close, and very attractive, and he seemed to like her very much. Briefly, she imagined what it would be like, marrying into Kristoff’s family, being officially, legally part of a community of people. People who had a home, who worked hard. People who, together, celebrated their achievements and mourned their losses. 

Erik tilted her chin up. “Mind if I kiss you?”

He didn’t know her last name, her legacy, her wealth. He didn’t recognize her from any magazine or news article. He thought she was pretty, and he liked being around her. She could say yes and he would make it all so easy. Or she could say no and he probably wouldn’t take it poorly. She could see him trying again another time depending on how coyly she said it, or keeping his distance if she was firm enough. He’d take his cues from her. He’d follow her lead. He was a good man, like Kristoff was a good man. A little egotistical, maybe. A little bombastic. It wouldn’t be terrible, being with someone like him. Not Kristoff, definitely not Anna, but as close as she would ever get.

Before she could answer, the back door opened and Kristoff said, “Lay off, Erik.” 

He shoved Erik away from her. Erik stumbled and said, “What the fuck, bro.” Then he shoved Kristoff back. “You’re married.”

“He said leave her alone,” Anna added from the doorway.

Erik looked disbelievingly between Anna and Kristoff. “You’re not her fucking parents.”

“Still,” Kristoff said, shoving him again, “not chill, dude.” Then Erik put Kristoff in a headlock, and Kristoff swept Erik’s knees out from under him, and they began rolling around in the sand.

“Should we do something?” Elsa asked.

“They’ll wear each other out,” Anna said. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“Sorry if that was — I just mean, Erik can be very forward, and I know you’ve never —”

“Kris told you?”

“Yeah.” She looked guilty. “I hope that’s okay. I know it’s not our business. We just didn’t want him to pressure you into anything.”

“I didn’t feel pressured, I just. I don’t know.” She wanted to tell Anna the truth, that she was only about to say yes because Erik reminded her of Kristoff. Even though her gut told her Anna would be glad to know, her brain, or what small part of it remained operational, reminded her that Anna would more than likely be pissed off and push Elsa out of her life. Elsa had done enough damage. She needed to just give up and go home.

They stood on the back porch and watched as the fight ended. Kristoff and Erik lay on the beach, catching their breath. Finally Erik stood and held out his hand to Kristoff, who took it.

No wonder Kristoff didn’t like talking about his feelings, Elsa thought. Punching it out was far more efficient.

No one was bleeding, but a bruise did form across Kristoff’s cheek. The fight didn’t dampen the party at all, and it was only after midnight that people began to leave. Erik stayed away from Elsa the rest of the evening, but before he left, he hugged her goodbye, told her it was good meeting her, and added that he hoped he’d see her at the next family dinner. He also mentioned that she could get his number from Kristoff if she wanted it, which she thought was a sweet and benign way of keeping the door open.

Her drunkenness had abated slightly with all the water she drank and crackers she ate, but when she returned from seeing Erik off, Anna and Kristoff were cheersing to something and taking shots. Neither of them had seemed all that drunk earlier, although Anna’s pink ears and Kristoff attacking Erik told her they weren’t entirely sober. Everyone else was finally gone.

“I guess I’ll head home,” Elsa offered. “Thank you for inviting me. I had fun.”

“Wait,” they said in unison, then stared at each other as if having a telepathic conversation in which they were urging the other to say something.

“We won’t get to see you for a few days,” Anna said. “Stay for another drink?”

Elsa had almost forgot Anna was leaving to visit family, and Kristoff had agreed to spend a few days alone to think over whatever it was they were trying to decide, what Elsa assumed was getting divorced, or cutting her out of their life. Probably the latter.

“Would you maybe —” Kristoff began. “Wait, let’s sit down for this.”

They led Elsa into the living room. Anna sat to her right and Kristoff to her left. Suddenly she was convinced that they were about to tell her she wasn’t allowed to come around anymore, that she’d jeopardized their relationship too much, and they were very sorry but that was the way it had to be. It was fine, she thought. She had come to Arendelle to be alone. She was okay on her own, and always had been. Nothing new.

“Would you want to spend the night with us?” Anna asked.

“I live next door,” Elsa said. “I’m fine to walk.”

“She means —” Kristoff put his hand on top of Elsa’s. “_With _us.”

Elsa still struggled to grasp their meaning. 

“We won’t do anything you don’t want to do,” Anna said, skipping ahead while Elsa was still stuck a mile back.

“We don’t have to do anything, really,” Kristoff added. “We just wanted to put the idea out there, right?”

“Right,” Anna agreed.

“I still don’t —” Elsa began, but she couldn’t finish her thought; Kristoff pressed his lips to hers, a soft, sweet kiss, and pulled back. Her initial thought was, _ Anna is right there_. Before she could react, Anna tilted Elsa’s chin toward her and offered another kiss, hers firmer, a beat longer. There was no denying their intentions now, although Elsa couldn’t string a coherent thought together to confirm it. 

“It’s okay if you don’t want to,” Anna said. “We just wanted to know which of us is the better kisser.”

Finally Elsa was jarred out of her trance. She laughed, and shocked herself by saying, “I’m not sure. I think you should try again.”

“Me first,” Anna said, and kissed her again. This one felt more like Anna — no reservations, hard and demanding. Her mouth felt so small and moved so quickly against her own. _ I want_, said the kiss, like a petulant child at a toy store. No wonder Kristoff had never taken another partner; Anna’s attention was intense, almost magical. Other people, places, feelings paled in comparison. At once Elsa wanted to hurry the night along but also savor it, in case it was the only time. Something in the back of her mind was telling her to slow down, think about the consequences of indulging in her fantasies, the risk and therefore cost of losing the best thing in her life, as, her mother used to tell her, indulgence often did. 

“My turn,” Kristoff said, and she pulled away to kiss him next. She was shocked by the newness of it, almost a different act altogether. Where Anna was demanding and fast-moving, he controlled the kiss easily, moved slowly and assuredly, teasing her with light bites to her lower lip as he tugged her closer to his side. Anna had kissed like it was a step toward something else, but Kristoff kissed like it was the only thing in the world worth doing. They broke apart to breathe, and he trailed kisses down her neck while Anna took her mouth again, hand trailing up the inside of her thigh while Kristoff’s cupped her breast. Elsa had been lamenting her many glasses of wine, but she wasn’t sure how she would have fared in this without it. As it was, she was overwhelmed, but pleasantly so. She felt safe and seen and loved with them. _ Fun_, she thought, _ I’m having fun _ — a concept she’d never before understood. 

Eventually Anna led them up to her room, holding Elsa’s hand, Elsa holding Kristoff’s. There was some taking-off of clothing, each other’s at first and then, giving up, their own. Anna had just guided Elsa onto the bed, Kristoff crawling between Elsa’s legs, when a bubble of panic rapidly swelled in her chest and burst.

“Wait,” she said. She was still in her leggings and bra. One of them, probably Anna, had undone her braid. Kristoff was still in a pair of boxer shorts, his erection apparent. Anna was the only one who had managed to undress entirely. Elsa was almost too shy to look, but when she did, she couldn’t tear her eyes away. Anna’s skin was pale, her body thin, almost curveless; her breasts were small and Elsa wanted to touch them, but held back.

“Are you okay?” Kristoff asked.

“Yes, I —” Elsa hardly had the words for what she wanted to say, and the ones she did have she’d never said aloud before, and wasn’t sure she could. She hated the idea of disappointing them. “I’m not sure I’m ready for — everything.”

Anna kissed the back of Elsa’s shoulder encouragingly. “Tell us what you want.”

“I don’t — could you two…? And I could just.” She lay back and propped her head on her hand. 

Anna and Kristoff looked at each other.

“We can do that,” Kristoff said. They kissed with the easy grace of two people who knew the other’s body better than their own but had been deprived of it for too long. Kristoff slid two fingers into Anna while he pressed kisses down her body, and eventually settled between her legs. Elsa watched, duvet gripped in her hand, as he ate his wife out. 

Breathless, Anna said, “Come here,” and brought Elsa’s mouth to hers again. Elsa was happy to oblige, and at last worked up the courage to touch Anna’s breast. Anna made the low, pleased sound that Elsa so loved. 

Anna’s face twisted in pleasure as Kristoff brought her off. Her back arched off the bed; she gasped as she came, and reached out to grip Elsa’s hand. Kristoff, naked now, came up to take Elsa’s chin possessively in hand and kiss her. Elsa tasted Anna on his mouth and, were she sober, could have come from that alone. Kristoff continued kissing her as Anna guided him inside her. His breath hitched, and for a moment his mouth went slack.

Elsa was overcome, and though she had intended only to watch, she began touching herself, soaked and sensitive, more so than she had ever been. “Harder,” she found herself saying, wanting the Kristoff from that night in the kitchen, and was relieved to see Anna nod enthusiastically in agreement. Kristoff, too, got a dark look about him, and honored the request with a snap of his hips. Anna shouted, and continued moaning through her husband’s now hard and fast thrusts. Elsa was poised at the brink of her own orgasm — she wanted to keep it hidden, not disturb them, but she wanted her pleasure to be seen by them as she was seeing theirs.

In the end she had held it back so long that she robbed herself of the choice, and came loudly, her shout muffled in Anna’s shoulder, body shuddering as wave upon wave crashed over her. For a moment she felt a spike of shame, having been witnessed in such a debauched act, but Kristoff let out a choked “oh, fuck,” and he stilled, body tensed. Anna surprised them both by coming again, at the same time as her husband, crying out as he filled her.

Kristoff rolled off Anna, and the three of them lay there, catching their breath. Elsa focused on the rush of the ocean outside, the sudden ticking-on of the furnace. 

“First dibs on bathroom,” Anna said, crawled gracelessly out of bed, and rushed out of the room.

“Goddammit,” Kristoff said. “Every time.” He reached out and took Elsa’s hand. “You okay?”

Elsa’s voice came out weak. “Better than I’ve ever been.”

“Good.” 

A moment later, Anna dashed back into the room, muttering, “Cold cold cold,” and climbed into bed between them. “Middle spoon!” she said, and threw the covers over the three of them.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A short chapter, but a longer one will be up in a couple days!

When Elsa awoke the next morning, Kristoff was no longer in bed. Anna lay sprawled across three-fourths of the mattress, snoring lightly and drooling. She was not an attractive sleeper; Elsa liked that about her. Her temples were pounding and nausea roiled in her gut. She’d never been a heavy drinker so hangovers were entirely new to her, and it seemed anymore that she couldn’t smell alcohol without feeling the effects of it the next day. She was hoping Kristoff was making breakfast, but looked out the window and found him out on the beach. She donned Anna’s coat, scarf, and boots and went out to join him. The morning was cloudy and bitterly cold. The wind whipped her hair into her face. 

He didn’t acknowledge her as she approached, and she couldn’t read the look on his face, blank as a stone. He sipped a cup of coffee. A few yards away, Sven sniffed at a large plank of driftwood. 

“So that happened,” Kristoff said.

“That definitely happened,” Elsa agreed.

“And it was —” He shook his head slightly in disbelief. “Good.”

“Very good.”

“I pride myself on not being one of _ those _ guys, you know? But I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t always wanted to — I mean, who wouldn’t…?” He paused for a long moment, staring out at the ocean as if it was the first time he’d seen it. “On one hand, it’s like, this is great, it’s exciting and easy and we’re all having a good time. On the other, I’m so far out of my element. I don’t know the first thing about — I don’t even know the _ word _for —”

Elsa slid her arm into the crook of his, in part to comfort him but also to absorb his body heat. She couldn’t feel the tip of her nose. “It’s okay. We don’t have to have all the answers right now.”

“Answers? I don’t even have the questions.” They spent a long moment watching the tide slip down the shore, and she sensed he was getting up the courage to say something else. He finally looked at her. “Anna really, really likes you, Elsa. She’s terrified you’re only pretending to like her so you can have me. And that’s throwing me off. She’s never been insecure about anything before.”

“You know that’s not true, right? I feel the same for both of you.” It was actually far more complicated than that. She’d never say it aloud, but in her hungover state, she saw her love for Anna as something akin to the heart-eyes emoji, and her love for Kristoff as the heart exclamation point. Surely this minor difference would only complicate things, so she kept it to herself, but it was apparent that while she had different feelings for each of them, she did not have stronger feelings for Kristoff over Anna, or vice versa. Although she found it interesting that with Kristoff, her crush grew slowly but insistently, while her attraction to Anna had been nearly instant, like an extremely pleasant punch to the face.

“I mean, yeah,” Kristoff said. “Or I guess — there’s part of me, this tiny little sliver, that wanted Anna to dump me so you and I could be together. And that same sliver is a little jealous that you like her too. But like ninety-nine percent of me is just stupid in love with both of you, and I didn’t think that was possible, but it is and I am. Sorry. I don’t know if it’s better to admit this stuff or pretend we’re starting this with a solid foundation.”

“I think it’s better to acknowledge our doubts. You can’t fix anything if you keep it hidden. And you know I’d never want to hurt your relationship.”

“I know. But you kinda did, and it ended up being a good thing. Anna and I have been talking, like actually _talking_, more than we ever have. I’m more confident in our marriage than I was before. So if there’s any hope of this working out, I’ll do whatever it takes.”

“Working out?”

“You didn’t think that was a one-time deal, did you? That wasn’t a casual drunken threesome.” When it was clear Elsa wasn’t understanding what he was saying, he added, “Elsa, we want you to be with us.”

Before Elsa could reply, Anna stuck her head out the door and shouted at them, “What the hell are you doing? It’s freezing.”

“Pretend I didn’t say that,” Kristoff said. “We were going to bring that up together.”

Inside, Anna was on her toes, reaching into a cabinet for a bowl. She appeared to be naked except for one of Kristoff’s shirts, which hung off of her like a tent. Kristoff pulled the bowl down for her and whispered something in her ear. Elsa busied herself putting the coat up, and pretended not to hear Anna say, “I know, but I’d like to eat first so I don’t barf on everything.”

Kristoff took over cooking while Anna and Elsa sat at the counter drinking coffee. Anna rested her head on Elsa’s shoulder. “You have any shopping to do today?” 

“Why would I go shopping today?” Elsa asked.

Anna lifted her head and looked at her. “It’s Black Friday. Everything’s on sale. People kill each other over it. Literally.”

“Oh. I didn’t know.”

“You’ve never had to buy anything on sale before, have you?” 

Elsa thought she might have been imagining it, but Anna seemed to have said it with an ounce of resentment, not her usual playfulness.

“Not really, no,” Elsa admitted, looking down at her hands clasped in her lap.

“No one _ has _to buy anything on sale,” Kristoff said, sliding a plate in front of each of them.

Thankfully Anna became engrossed in breakfast. They were the greasiest bacon and eggs Elsa had ever eaten, and she instantly felt better, or at least, more able to process everything that had happened, and convince herself Anna had just been teasing. It was also possibly the tensest breakfast Elsa had ever had, excepting the brunch with Weselton when they began acquisition negotiations. At least then she’d been too depressed to feel anything. Now, she felt like a single pulsing nerve.

Anna pushed her plate away, empty except for a few streaks of yolk and a small bit of crust she fed to Sven. “Time to have a hard conversation,” she said cheerfully, clapping the crumbs off her hands. “Are we ready?”

“Sure,” Elsa said.

Kristoff topped off all their coffee mugs. “I guess.”

Anna flipped open her padfolio which Elsa hadn’t noticed a moment ago. From it, she pulled several loose sheets of paper and handed one to each of them. The top of the page read, _ Post-Threesome Debrief Agenda, November 29_. Below it, the first bullet point said, _ Sharing feelings_. 

“This is your fault,” Kristoff said to Elsa.

“Listen, I’m good at one thing,” Anna replied, “and that’s managing people. So bear with me.”

He sighed.

“I’ll go first,” Anna said. “I feel very good and happy, and I had a lot of fun, and I’d like to do it again.” To Kristoff, she added, “Your turn.”

“I feel great. Obviously.”

“It’s not obvious,” Anna said. “You have to say how you feel.”

“We’ve been together almost twenty years without talking about how we feel.”

Anna smiled passive-aggressively. “And look how well that turned out.” 

“I like this," Elsa said. "It feels like a board meeting.” 

“Thank you,” Anna replied, apparently touched by the compliment. “Your turn.”

“Oh, um.” Elsa thought about it. “I’m good, but I don’t really know what’s going on.”

“That brings us to our next point.” 

Elsa glanced at the agenda. The second bullet point read, _ Figure out what’s going on_.

“Not to cut through all the red tape here,” Kristoff said, “but Elsa, we’d like you to be in a relationship with us.”

“That’s not exactly the question, though,” Anna added sharply. “If _ somebody _hadn’t skipped to the end of the agenda, I would have had the chance to say that we all have some thinking to do over the next few days.” 

“So you aren’t getting divorced?” Elsa asked.

“No,” Kristoff said firmly, at the same time Anna said, “We don’t know.”

They looked at each other. “What?” Kristoff asked.

“See? This is why we need the agenda.” She pointed to Kristoff’s paper. “I have a whole ten minutes set aside for that, because, like everything, _ we never actually talked about it_.”

“I forgave you for making out with Hans, remember? Case closed.”

“And I said you shouldn’t forgive me until you had a chance to think about it.”

“You can’t dictate my forgiveness.”

“You’re only forgiving me because you’re uncomfortable being mad at me.”

“That’s not true.”

“You’re sweeping it under the rug. You’re not taking any time to process it. I _betrayed_ you. You should be mad.”

He slammed his fist on the counter. The cutlery bounced. “I’m forgiving you because I love you. That love is strong enough to handle you shoving your tongue in some dude’s mouth. I don’t need time to think about it, I don’t need to process my feelings, and I don’t want a divorce.”

Anna and Elsa stared at him. 

“Whoa,” Anna said. “That was kinda hot.”

He shrunk down again. “Sorry, I just —”

“No, that’s good. Feel your feelings.” Anna looked to Elsa. “I know we’re kind of a tire fire right now, but I think all of us are reasonable, solution-oriented people, and if anyone can make it work, it’s us.”

“I think taking a couple days to think about it is a good idea,” Elsa said. 

“So it’s agreed,” Anna said. “We go our separate ways, collect our thoughts, and meet up again Sunday afternoon.”

* * *

Elsa watched from her window as Anna tossed a duffel bag into the back seat of her Camry. Kristoff had his hands in his pockets, looking sad. Anna cupped his face in her hands, lifted on her toes, and kissed him. It began as a sweet goodbye kiss, but when Anna went to pull away, Kristoff backed her against her car and kissed her again, the way he’d kissed Elsa the night before. Anna looked dazed when he finally let her go, and they exchanged a few more words before she finally ducked into her car and drove off. A moment later, Elsa got a text from Kristoff in the group chat: _ I miss u both already :( _

It was difficult keeping her distance when Kristoff was just next door. She knew he resented that Anna was taking time away from him, when he barely got to see her in the first place, but Anna did have a point — they needed distance to pierce through the lovesick fog that surrounded them. 

She had no experience in relationships with one person, let alone two. She’d never put much thought into her own sexuality, always assuming that when she met the right person, she’d know. Until now, gender had always seemed like such a silly thing on which to base attraction, like hair or eye color, or the shape of someone’s nose. Things you could certainly admire about a person but which did not fundamentally define them. She was attracted to Anna’s ferocity, intelligence, playfulness, her senses of style and humor. She liked Anna’s bright eyes and the freckles that smattered her cheeks. She was attracted to Kristoff’s kindness, loyalty, and humility, and liked that he was tall and broad, that he could make her feel small. She loved that when either of them smiled, nothing else seemed to matter.

On the surface it seemed obvious; Elsa didn’t want to give it a second thought. Of course she would be honored to be with them. But as the day crept on, she began to see tendrils of darkness seep into her perception — Kristoff was right, they were starting from a shaking foundation. She would be walking into a delicate relationship. Their marriage reminded her of her house, this old place that had been loved and painstakingly built upon, and which had, in its neglect, fallen to ruin. The problems were not the house’s fault, nor the prior owners’, but the length of time it sat untended. And that, of course, was the market’s fault, the fragility of the economy, the disparate class divide, the gentrification of Arendelle. For what felt like the thousandth time, Elsa wondered what Kristoff and Anna’s marriage would look like in another time, another place, one in which money did not play a role in every decision either of them made. Who would Anna have become if she had never been taught to measure success with a dollar sign? How much happier would Kristoff be if Arendelle still felt like home?

Unable to organize her thoughts any further, with a mild headache still kicking around in her skull, she went to bed early. Hours later, she awoke to the click and squeal of her front door opening. She glanced at her phone. It was just past one in the morning and she had a text from Kristoff. Squinting, she opened it: _ Cant sleep. Coming over. _A moment later, she felt a dip in the mattress, and Kristoff curled behind her, tugging her close to his chest.

His hand skated down her stomach, hip, thigh. He froze. “Are you naked?”

She was, because she had been asleep alone, in her own bed. 

“We’re not supposed to see each other,” she said.

“Don’t care,” he muttered. “Don’t like being alone.” 

“You need to go home.”

“Telling me to leave?”

She wanted to, but she couldn’t make herself form the words. 

“Thought so,” he said smugly.

“Did you ask Anna?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t lie.”

“I’m not.” He paused. “She just hasn’t replied.”

“Kris.” She turned around to face him. It was a bad idea. In the dim moonlight, she could read the hungry look on his face. He lifted the covers and his eyes trailed down her body.

“You have no idea how much I want you,” he said. 

“What would Anna say if she were here?”

“She’d probably flip a quarter to see which one of us got to go down on you first.”

“You can’t say things like that.”

“Why not?” He pressed a kiss to her throat and bit down lightly. She gasped. “Don’t like thinking about my wife eating you out?”

She lacked the willpower to tell him to stop. He continued kissing down her neck, chest, eventually reaching her breast, and stopped. His hand clenched into a fist and he looked pained to say, “You’re right. I just. I can’t stop thinking about you. And her. And you and her together. It’s — I’ve never felt anything close to this. I feel like I’m going crazy.”

He rolled away from her, onto his back, his forearm over his eyes as he took measured breaths. “I want to kiss you again.”

“I know.”

“And then I want to make you come. And then come again. And then fuck you into the mattress.”

“I want that too.”

“Even when Anna was in college, it didn’t feel like this. I guess because I always knew we’d end up together. So I was patient, you know? But this — I don’t know what’s going to happen. I want to do everything at once.”

“You need to sleep.”

He lifted her hand and placed it on his chest. Beneath her palm, his heart beat rapidly. “Not a chance.”

“Let’s at least remove temptation.”

“How?”

“We’ll go somewhere.”

“Were you listening when I mentioned all the public sex I’ve had? And how that’s kind of a thing for me?” He sat up and ran a hand down his face. “Okay, I have an idea.”

An hour and a half later, they pulled into the driveway of a modest bungalow. Elsa had already forgotten the name of the town; it was like any other inland suburb, marked by sprawl, a community that revolved around a Walmart that sat among a line of fast food and oil change garages. The house was identical to the ones that surrounded it, modern and cheaply made. 

Quietly, they got out of the truck and circled the house. When Kristoff had relayed the plan to Elsa, she told him it was a terrible idea, and after the long drive, maintained still that it was a terrible idea. 

“They’re going to call the police,” Elsa said.

“They won’t if they don’t hear us,” Kristoff hissed. He stopped at a window at the back of the house, over which the curtains were drawn. He knocked lightly. 

“You know that’s not going to work,” Elsa said.

He gave her a dirty look, and knocked again, this time slightly harder. A moment later, Anna groggily opened the curtains. Her hair was out of sorts and one of her eyes was shut. She slid open the window. 

“What the mother fuck,” she said. 

Kristoff smiled. “Hey, babe.”

Anna looked at Elsa.

“Hi, bundt cake.”

“This better be good.”

“It’s not,” Elsa said.

“We missed you,” Kristoff explained.

“That’s the point of the separation period." To Elsa, Anna said, "He used to do this all the time."

"So he said."

Kristoff gave Anna a pleading puppy-dog look that was eerily similar to Sven’s.

Anna sighed. “Give me a sec. I’ll meet you outside.”

A few minutes later, Anna was climbing into the truck. She was in pajama pants with little snowmen on them, her face wrapped in a thick tartan scarf. Muffled, she said, “Take me to food, please.”

They ended up at McDonald’s because Elsa admitted she had never been there. She warily eyed Kristoff for ordering a cup of coffee with his Big Mac. Anna ordered the largest quantity of McNuggets available with three different dipping sauces. Elsa had to read every single item on the menu before she could choose, to the exhausted cashier’s chagrin. She ended up with something called a “snack wrap.”

As they ate, Anna and Kristoff traded stories about their high school shenanigans, all the trouble they got in, all the trouble they _ should _have gotten in, and by the time their trays were empty, Anna was making Kristoff laugh so hard that coffee came out of his nose. 

“Alright,” Anna said, wrapping her scarf around her neck. “I’m awake now. Where to?”

They drove and drove, through the hills and down the coast. Elsa held Anna’s hand and rested her head on her shoulder. They listened to music and didn’t talk at all. The full moon seemed to follow them, until it slowly disappeared into the morning light.


	8. Chapter 8

Elsa slept through most of Saturday, and Sunday she spent pacing and thinking while dictating notes on her phone. Anna was due home in the afternoon, and they were all going to sit down and have a very adult, fully clothed conversation about the state of things. Kristoff, she could see, spent most of the day in and around the kitchen, and Elsa caught him looking up into her window on more than one occasion. 

Around three in the afternoon, Anna pulled into the driveway. Elsa watched anxiously as Kristoff came out and grabbed Anna’s overnight bag from the trunk. He looked as shaken as Elsa felt. Few words were shared between them and both of them behaved as if they were about to attend a funeral. Elsa had run through every possible outcome of their meeting a dozen times over. She told herself the worst-case scenario — that they would decide she should not be part of their lives at all, and to please stay away from them — was not plausible. She knew Kristoff was unlikely to agree to something like that. _ Unless_, she told herself, Anna offered to quit her job if Kristoff promised to stay away from Elsa. Anna was a wildcard, endlessly expressive but somehow impossible to read, operating on a whole other level of reasoning. She was emotionally inclined but intellectually driven, while Kristoff was the opposite. Just because she had feelings for Elsa didn’t mean she’d follow through on them, especially if she thought it would put her marriage further in jeopardy. In the hours of their absence she might have pulled a complete one-eighty. Kristoff, however, followed his heart. His motivations and desires were apparent, but when given an ultimatum, Elsa knew he wouldn’t choose her, and if she was being honest with herself, she wouldn’t want him to. 

She loved Kristoff, but if push came to shove, she’d be happy to have him as a friend. Anna, though — she could never see Anna as just a friend. What she felt for her was too intense. More than anything, she wanted the opportunity to explore their potential. 

While Elsa waited to be called over, she couldn’t eat, or read, or even scroll through endless bathroom tile selections. She sat in her armchair, staring into Anna and Kristoff’s house, phone clutched tightly in hand. She checked repeatedly to make sure it was on vibrate rather than silent, that she had a steady cell signal and wifi connection. She chewed her lips raw. Finally, Anna texted her: _You can come over. _

Anna didn’t normally end texts with a period; she almost always used emojis. Elsa nearly walked out of her house without shoes or a coat, then went back in to get them, and on her way out again, Kristoff was standing on her front porch.

“Don’t forget your key,” he said, smiling a little. He nodded toward his house. “Thought I’d walk you over. Make sure you’re okay.”

“I’m fine.” Elsa closed the door behind her, key gripped in her fist. “Are you fine?”

“Loaded question.”

She couldn’t bring herself to inquire further, and they walked the rest of the short way in silence. Inside, Kristoff took her coat and hung it on the peg by the door with all the other coats, and the seemingly permanent mountain of shoes underneath. Anna was waiting in the living room, scrolling through something on her phone. She was dressed in a sweatshirt and jeans, and Elsa wanted to snuggle up next to her but instead perched at the opposite end of the couch. Sven came over with a stuffed hippopotamus in his mouth and dropped it in Elsa’s lap. 

“Thank you,” Elsa said, patting his head, genuinely grateful to be welcomed by at least one member of their family, even if the other two were about to boot her out of their lives for good.

“Since _ somebody _ complained about my agenda,” Anna began, sliding her phone between the couch cushions, “we’re winging it. And I think the king of winging it should start us off.”

Kristoff was sitting in his recliner, occupying himself by scratching behind Sven’s ears. “I think I’ve been pretty clear about what I want, and that hasn’t changed. It’s not something I ever thought I’d be into, but Elsa being in our relationship could make all of us really happy, and if it doesn’t work out, I think we’re all mature enough that we can handle it." He paused, fidgeted, ran his palms down his thighs. "And, I don’t want a divorce, you know that, but —” He couldn’t seem to bring his eyes up to meet hers. “I’m glad you insisted on some time to think, because I realized I’m not willing to leave Arendelle. It’s my home, and my livelihood, and my family is here. And we have to admit that this isn’t working out anymore. I wouldn’t be saying this if I weren’t completely sure you’re as miserable as I am. So, if we don’t figure this out —” He took a deep breath. “No. If you don’t quit your job, I’m leaving.”

It was as if he’d hit mute on reality. Even the ocean was quiet. Kristoff looked like he was ready to break, while Anna’s eyes went wide, and the color drained from her face. She clasped her hands together so tightly that her knuckles whitened. Elsa thought this should have been something to bring up when it was just the two of them, but she understood his logic — with Elsa present, Anna had to listen. She couldn’t get angry and storm off and shut him out, at least not, in her mind, without risking Elsa’s opinion of her. And he probably felt far more confident having Elsa there, who understood the breadth of his loneliness, and his desperation to begin a family with his wife.

“How long do I have to think about it?” Anna asked quietly. Elsa didn’t miss Kristoff’s pained expression. It must hurt so much, Elsa thought, that Anna’s decision wasn’t immediate. Then again, being given an ultimatum is never a pleasant experience, and Elsa could feel Anna’s anger and sadness rolling off of her.

“End of the year,” Kristoff said. “And I’ll help however I can. I’ll re-budget expenses, find more clients, cancel ESPN. If you want to sell the house and live in a tent on the beach, I’ll do it. Anything to keep both you and Arendelle in my life.”

“What will we do for health insurance?” Anna asked, her voice shaking as if forcibly keeping it a reasonable volume. “Retirement? What if something happens to the house? What if one of us gets cancer, or — even a cavity, Kris. A single cavity. Do you know how much a filling costs? What about hurricanes? My job sucks but at least if something bad happens, we can recover. Without it, one bad day could ruin us.”

Kristoff took a measured breath. Elsa assumed Anna had brought all of these things up before and he had probably tried to placate her and, knowing him, answer each of her questions literally. Now he was standing his ground. “Doesn’t matter. One bad day could ruin anyone. But for now we’re both healthy. We have homeowner’s insurance. My grandparents would take us in in a heartbeat if anything happened to the house. Your parents would, too. I know you’re afraid, but we’ll never be homeless. We’ll never starve. I’m willing to trade in our stability for a chance at being happy again.”

“Is there anything else you want to add?” Anna asked, barely disguising the unrest in her voice.

“No,” Kristoff said. “That’s all.”

Anna turned to Elsa. “Would you like to go next?”

“Sure,” Elsa said, and pulled up a note on her phone, on which she’d written several bullet points. “I’d like to get to know both of you better, and continue whatever this is. But I have some reservations.”

“That’s fair,” Kristoff said. “It would probably be a red flag if you didn’t.”

“Agreed,” Anna added.

Their encouragement gave her confidence. She read directly from her phone. “Neither of you know a lot about me, but as you might imagine, I’ve had something of a sheltered upbringing, so I don’t know what to expect from any of this, and I have a feeling I may misstep. The last thing I want is to hurt either of you, but I also very much want to be part of your lives. Perhaps my naivete is the only thing allowing me to move forward, and in that, it might be a strength.” She lowered her phone. “That said, as much as Kristoff doesn’t like being business-y about this, it’s all I really know, so I think we should schedule time to have conversations like this every few weeks.”

“Let me make sure I understand,” Kristoff said. “You’re into —” He gestured between Anna and himself. “Whatever we’re up for?”

“Yes. But I’d like to go slow, if we could. The faster we go, the more it’ll hurt if we crash.”

“Fair,” Kristoff said. Anna nodded but she seemed distracted and disheartened.

Elsa put a hand on her thigh. “Your turn.”

“I’m in,” Anna said.

“That’s it?” Kristoff asked. “You don’t have a thirty-point action plan? Binders of research on polyamory?”

It was the first time any of them had used the word, and while Anna only reacted with a shrug, Elsa found herself enlivened by the term, one she had only a vague awareness of but which put their ambiguous setup into sharp relief. It meant also that Kristoff had been the one doing research.

“We’re not going into this with a shrug,” Kristoff said. “It’s all or nothing.”

“I said yes,” Anna said, standing. “Right now Elsa is the best thing about our relationship. Obviously I’m not giving that up. If we’re done, I’m going to bed.” Before Kristoff could answer, she stormed upstairs. The house shuddered with the slam of a bedroom door.

After a moment, he moved to the couch and lay down, his head on Elsa’s lap. “Hi, new girlfriend.”

“Hi, new boyfriend.” She combed her fingers through his hair. “I think you did a good job.”

“Do you think it’s fair? What I said?”

“I don’t think ultimatums are ever a good choice. When you back someone into a corner, you see the worst of them. But I understand why you did it.”

“I can’t stop thinking about what our lives could be. The three of us. Happy. We live in this beautiful place, we have this beautiful love, and we don’t get to enjoy it. What’s the point if you have to give up everything that makes life worth living?”

She knew what she would choose if given the same ultimatum, but she had enough money to take any risk she wanted, any time. Selling the business had been a hard decision, but her personal livelihood was never in the balance. 

“I don’t want to be a bandage over your relationship,” she said, feeling selfish for bringing it up at all when she hadn’t even had the guts to type it out in her phone with her other notes. But it needed to be said. “I’m not here to fix things between you two.”

He looked up at her, surprised. “God, no. We love you. Even if things were perfect, I’d still want this, and I guarantee Anna would, too. We’ve had a great relationship, but — I hate to say it, it’s always felt like something was missing. I never knew what until I met you.”

“And if you and Anna break up —”

He took her chin and kissed her lightly. “I won’t put you in a situation where you have to choose between us. I meant what I said. All or nothing.”

* * *

Kristoff had fallen asleep and thankfully didn’t wake up when Elsa gently slid out from under him. He must not have been sleeping well. She couldn’t blame him. Upstairs, she knocked on Anna’s door.

“If it’s Kristoff, bite me,” Anna said.

“And if it’s Elsa?”

“She can bite me, but like. For fun.”

Elsa opened the door. Anna was at her desk, on her laptop looking at what appeared to be a daunting Outlook window. 

“Already started?” Elsa took a seat at the edge of the bed.

“Twelve hundred emails. It’s only been five days.”

That was a lot even for Elsa, who used to field hundreds of emails a day, sure, but she also had Gwen and a few others who helped manage her inbox. 

Anna clicked Send on an email and spun around in her chair. “I’m about to divorce him just for putting me in this position.”

“I understand.”

“But he’s right, isn’t he? This isn’t a marriage anymore. We’re reluctantly cohabitating.” Anna covered her face with her hands. “Sometimes I wish something horrible would happen to me, so I’d have to be in the hospital for days. Maybe weeks. I don’t care about the pain, or bills. I just want a break.”

“This week didn’t help at all?”

She shook her head. “How did you do it? How did you just walk away?”

“I don’t know. That person who sold the company wasn’t really me. I don’t think I’ve ever been me. Until now, I guess. And I’m still learning who that person is. And trying to recover.” She paused, unsure if she should say what she wanted to say. “You know if you did quit, and something bad happened, I’m always here for you. I’d never let you lose your house or drown in medical bills.”

“That’s not the point,” Anna said sharply. “We shouldn’t have to rely on anyone.”

“You’re not relying on me. It’s a safety net. Everyone needs a safety net.”

“You need a safety net if you’re on a tightrope. Not if you’re walking down the street. I don’t want to be in a position where I even have the possibility of falling. I’ve worked so hard to get where I am, Elsa. I can’t just quit.”

“My mom used to say to my dad, ‘The work will always be there.’" She took Anna's hands between her own. "You are brilliant, motivated, and well-educated. There will always be work for you in this world. You may walk away from one opportunity but ten more will pop up. I promise.”

Anna looked at her, searching for something, and Elsa could finally see the depth of exhaustion etched across her face. “If I applied to Fjord, would you have hired me?”

“In a heartbeat. And I would have done anything to make sure you were happy working for me.”

“Thank you.”

Feeling daring, Elsa dragged her from her chair to the bed. “We made an important decision tonight, and I think we should celebrate.”

“Oh?”

Elsa kissed her, and her heart fluttered; she didn’t realize how much she needed this, how eager she was to take care of Anna the way she deserved. 

“Should Kris…?” Anna began as Elsa tugged at the hem of her hoodie.

“Let him rest.” Elsa laid kisses down Anna’s chest and reveled in the feeling of her nipple hardening on her tongue. She had just told them she wanted to go slow, but now, with her hand down Anna’s jeans, teasing her clit with her fingertips, she understood what Kristoff meant by wanting to do everything at once. She wanted to taste Anna, to make her scream in pleasure as she’d seen Kristoff do. Anna had a response to every little movement of Elsa’s hand, a sound, an expression. She slid her hand into Elsa’s leggings in return, and they kissed, or tried to, while they brought each other off. Anna seemed to know exactly what Elsa needed, and Elsa was shocked by how quickly her orgasm built. She pressed her forehead to Anna’s, their noses brushing, and breathed together. Under her own fingers, Anna was swollen and wet, and Elsa was sure she was just as close.

Elsa came with a gasp and Anna followed moments later, while they kissed messily and moaned into each other’s mouths. When at last they settled, Elsa couldn’t help bringing her fingers to her mouth, and relished the sweet taste. 

“Should have never married a man,” Anna said, her arm thrown over her eyes while she caught her breath.

* * *

Monday morning was business as usual. Elsa woke up twenty minutes late and found Kristoff whistling in her kitchen, pulling down plates from the cabinet. She liked that he felt so welcome in her house, that he treated it as an extension of his own. A bag of pastries sat on the counter and the coffee pot percolated. Elsa came up and hugged him from behind, forehead pressed against his spine. Wind rattled the house, and waves crashed loudly over the rocks.

“Good morning,” he said, and turned around in her embrace. He put his arms around her and kissed the top of her head.

“Any updates?”

“Nope.”

“Silent treatment?”

“She’s talking but she’s not really saying anything.” She watched his eyes flick down her body. He tugged at the lapel of her robe. “Is this all you’re wearing?”

She stepped away and leaned on the kitchen island. “Maybe.”

He took a step closer and untied the belt. The robe fell open. He gave her a questioning glance and she nodded. He parted the robe, his eyes falling down her body.

“Why don’t we cancel our plans,” he began, “and spend the day in your room.”

She tugged the robe out of his hands and closed it again. “That’s not fair to Anna.”

“We’ll record it and send it to her.”

Elsa liked that idea very much, but she wasn’t about to admit it. “Going slow, remember?”

“There’s school-zone slow and there’s glacier-slow.”

She reached up on her toes and kissed him lightly on the lips. “Work first, play later.”

“You’re just like her.”

“Thank you.”

The day quickly got away from them. Kristoff’s guys began showing up to work on the master bath. Elsa was busy figuring out her December schedule, having forgotten that, even though she was no longer the owner of Fjord Lumber, she still had other obligations, namely residing on the board of several nonprofits, all of which were launching their Giving Tuesday campaigns and wanted things from her — money, mostly. She’d always dreaded her board duties, but now that they weren’t additional responsibilities in her already-packed schedule, she was looking forward to dressing up in a suit and sitting at a big table and _ not _being anyone’s boss. 

Her morning was spent shooting off emails and scheduling contractors. She had a brief lunch with Kristoff before the washer-dryer set finally arrived, a task which occupied the following several hours. First, to oversee its proper installation, and then, to carefully read through the instruction booklets. Somehow she did not anticipate that she would need many additional materials — detergent, which should have been obvious but it had never occurred to her; fabric softener, which seemed useless; and dryer sheets, which also seemed useless. She dreaded her next trip to the store. 

That was where Kristoff found her, perched on top of her new washing machine, desperately googling “wash clothes in hot or cold water” and “do you really need fabric softener?” She glanced up from her phone and realized all the pounding and whirring sounds had stopped, and it was well past four p.m. 

“We worked,” Kristoff said, plucking her phone from her hand. He settled between her open knees, his hand skating up her thigh. She found her legs rising to his hips and her ankles locking behind him. He’d washed up already, but missed a spot of something dark on his jaw. She brushed it off with her thumb.

He pressed a kiss to her throat, her neck cradled in his hand. 

“Did you ask Anna?” she asked.

“I did.”

“And she said?”

“It was fine.”

“Which emoji did she use?”

“The kissy-face one.”

“With or without the heart?”

“With.” He kissed up her throat. She’d made out with and fingered Anna without Kristoff being present, so she figured it was fine, but still. Communication was key.

“Okay,” she said, and his lips were on hers in an instant, kissing her so frantically that she had trouble keeping up. His hand slid up the inside of her thigh and he rubbed his fingers gently, teasingly over her. She gasped and clung onto him. “Too much?” he asked. She shook her head. 

He glanced at their surroundings. “I’m not going to get you off in the laundry room. Hold on.” Her brain skidded to a halt at _ get you off, _but before she could even think to reply, he was lifting her off the washing machine and carrying her out of the laundry room. 

They made it as far as the living room, onto the couch that Elsa had yet to use. She’d picked it out thinking it looked classy, all sharp lines and neutral blues, but now she worried it made her living room look like a catalog photo, not a real house a real person might live in. The cushions were stiff and it still smelled like the store, and she’d only just sat down when Kristoff began tugging at her leggings. She lifted her hips and he slid them off, and dragged her hips down to the edge of the cushion. 

He paused and asked, with the utmost sincerity, “Is this okay?”

She nodded, and inhaled sharply on the first light pass of his tongue over her clit. Her hands found his hair. She thought when this finally happened she’d feel self-conscious — had she groomed enough? cleaned enough? would she come fast enough? — but Kristoff was so clearly enjoying himself, she couldn’t be bothered. He gripped her thighs and proceeded with a singular focus, the same diligence with which he repaired her roof and laid tile and put up drywall. He slipped a finger into her, then a second, the sweet stretch only bordering on painful. 

She wanted to make it last in case everything suddenly blew up in their faces and this was the only time this would happen, but Kristoff seemed insistent on going hard and fast, expending all the energy he’d kept bottled up for so long. If she had any other neighbors, they would have surely complained about the noise. She was louder than she thought she’d be, and when she came, her throat rang with a cry that rivaled the whistling of the wind into her drafty house.

Kristoff sat back on his heels and wiped his face with the back of his hand. He looked at his watch. “We have to start dinner.”

“But what about —” She was too dazed to finish the thought, but made a hand gesture toward the bulge in his jeans.

“Later.” He stood and held out his hand. “Food is more important.”

* * *

Anna was late getting home and extremely grouchy because of it. Elsa and Kristoff had made dinner together and kept it warmed on the stove, and spent the rest of the time trying to stay away from each other, failing, and making out against or on various surfaces. When Anna got home, she looked totally drained and barely waved hello before going up to her room to change. 

“I’m sure she’s fine,” Kristoff said.

Anna joined them moments later, the food laid out — fried pork chops and fresh green beans, with thick-sliced potato bread. She kissed Elsa and then Kristoff hello before slumping into a chair. 

“How was your day?” Kristoff asked carefully.

“Fine,” Anna said. She wouldn’t meet their gaze. Her hair was pulled back in a tight bun and her face was caked in makeup. This was not at all the woman from their fun week together.

Kristoff glanced at Elsa as if to say, _ See how bad it gets? _

“The washer and dryer got installed today,” Elsa offered.

“That’s good,” Anna replied. She was barely eating her food, just picking at it and putting the occasional bite in her mouth. Mostly she was tearing off chunks of bread and eating it dry. 

They ate the rest of the meal in silence. Just as Elsa was about to excuse herself to start cleaning up, she noticed silent tears streaming down Anna’s face. Kristoff noticed at the same time and was out of his chair in a heartbeat. 

“Hey, what’s wrong? What happened?” he said, wrapping his arm around her shoulders.

She tucked her face into his neck and cried. Kristoff looked up at Elsa, helpless. It took a bit of coaxing, but he ushered Anna to the couch and held her. Meanwhile Elsa quietly cleaned up dinner, washed the dishes, and put the leftovers in the fridge. She stalled as long as she could, but didn’t hear them talking, and finally decided to join, if only to wish them goodnight.

Kristoff was whispering something that sounded like, _ I love you. No matter what, I love you. _

“I should go,” Elsa said, nudging a box of tissues toward Anna, who seemed to have calmed slightly.

Anna held out her hand, though, and Elsa couldn’t deny her. She sat on Anna’s other side and took it. A ring of mascara had melted under Anna’s eyes. Sven nosed at her knees, concerned.

“I think,” Anna began, and tried several times to continue the thought, but couldn’t. Finally she said, “I think I need to quit my job.”

Kristoff squeezed Anna tightly against him, his eyes closing in relief. Elsa squeezed Anna's hand in hers and said, “I’m proud of you.”

But she should have known it wouldn’t be that easy.

Anna didn’t put in her notice the next day, or the day after. She said she had requested a meeting with her boss, but her boss kept rescheduling, and she was so busy that she had no time to put her foot down about it. Kristoff asked her every night if there was anything he could do, and during the day while Anna was gone, he asked Elsa repeatedly if she thought he should be doing more to be supportive. At first she offered to renegotiate their contract to give him more money, but he refused, which frustrated her. She wanted to give him an advance on fixing the siding, gutters, and chimney the following spring, but he said she could pay him once he completed the job. Then she told him, in a roundabout way, what Anna had told her about the bills he paid and how he should take on more work. She found out that Kristoff didn’t have a website for his business, so Elsa referred him to a few web designers and offered to pay for it as an early Christmas gift. Kristoff was wary, but eventually agreed, and she was so pleased that she kissed him, which rendered him momentarily dumb. She’d never taken the initiative to kiss him before, and he seemed to like it, based on the way he immediately pushed her against a wall and made out with her for a solid five minutes.

Although Anna’s job situation was tense, the relationship between the three of them was going very smoothly, or so Elsa thought. Every night Anna came home exhausted, but Elsa and Kristoff made sure she ate a big dinner, and often, Anna would fall asleep on Elsa’s lap as they watched television. It took Elsa over a week to work up the courage to ask, “Would you like to go on a date?”

“Where?” Anna asked.

“My house,” Elsa said. “This weekend. I thought I might make us dinner.”

“You already make us dinner,” Kristoff said. “Like, every night.”

“_You _make dinner and I stand around drinking wine.”

“And you taste-test things. It’s a very important job.”

Though she would never show them, Elsa had a Pinterest board for Anna and Kristoff on which she put recipes and gift ideas she thought they might like. Presently it had over five-hundred pins and was becoming somewhat unwieldy. Watching Kristoff cook awed her. He seemed to plan meals effortlessly, seven days a week, whereas Elsa had been thinking of what to cook for a single meal for days now.

“I think it sounds great,” Anna said, and gave Kristoff a knowing look. For once Elsa could tell what they were both thinking — _ threesome threesome threesome _— because it was what she was thinking, too. This time she wanted to participate, maybe even be the center of their attention.

“Yeah, definitely,” Kristoff added. The only indication he’d picked up on the unspoken agreement was the flush that rose up his neck.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sincerest apologies for setting this down for six months. But I still love fairy tales, polyamory, and Frozen; and I hate capitalism and gentrification, so inevitably, I've returned.

_ Let me come over and help_, Kristoff texted. He and Anna were supposed to head over at five, but Elsa had begun texting him food-related questions at two in the afternoon.

_ No I can do this_, she replied.

It was their group chat, and based on Anna’s silence, Elsa guessed she was getting caught up on sleep. Kristoff was probably bored and therefore horny, and if she let him come over, they would get distracted inside a minute. They’d been fooling around consistently and though he didn’t say anything about it, she knew he wanted to fuck her, but Anna needed to be there for it, a rule Elsa had laid down because she wanted her there. Elsa didn’t believe in the concept of virginity and held no sentimentality toward her first time having penetrative sex, but she needed Anna to help her through it. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like without another woman present who was more experienced, who could offer her guidance and reassurance. It must be awful.

Certain imbalances had developed rapidly — Kristoff got Elsa off multiple times a day but she had yet to reciprocate, mostly out of nervousness. He didn’t seem to mind going without. In fact he appeared to be enjoying the deprivation for reasons Elsa couldn’t entirely understand. Anna, on the other hand, had been too tired for anything more than some lazy kissing. Elsa wondered if she and Kristoff continued their Tuesday/Friday night routine, and if it was her business to ask about it, or request to be invited. There were so many questions she still had, but with Anna at a fraction of her capacity, it never felt like the right time to ask. Part of her hoped they’d use tonight to talk a little more about it, a conversation she was sure she’d have to initiate, given that Anna was too tired to think about semantics and Kristoff was allergic to speaking his feelings. 

_ Please elsa i am Dying_, he added. 

Elsa glanced into his house and saw him staring up at her, frowning. He pressed his palm against the window.

_ Fine, but no backseat cooking_, she replied, and two minutes later Kristoff was opening her door. 

She sighed, a snarky comment poised on her tongue, but, as she predicted, he swept her up in a kiss that quickly led to a makeout session against the refrigerator. A timer went off, and they broke apart. 

“What’s that for?” he asked.

She hesitated. “I don’t remember.”

He cupped her face in his hands and kissed her forehead. “I am so in love with you it hurts.” Then he set about flipping through her printed Pinterest recipe pages on the counter.

“Don’t you dare,” Elsa said, tugging the pages away from him. “This is my dinner.”

He lifted his hands up and stepped away. “Okay, okay. I’ll keep my distance,” he said, but she could feel his eyes on her every movement while he sipped at a beer and leaned against the counter. He’d connected her phone to a Bluetooth speaker and picked some bluesy-sounding Christmas songs to listen to.

When she’d finally gotten to a stopping point, he said, “Come here," and pulled her down onto his lap in the armchair, which led to yet more kissing, his hand rubbing between her legs. She got dangerously close to coming, and tugged his wrist away. 

“Save it for later,” she said. 

He nudged and kissed at her throat, but she couldn’t manage to cool down. It took all her willpower not to drag him to her bedroom. “I’ve been dying to know,” he began. “Are you going to let me fuck you tonight?”

Even a week ago, Kristoff uttering such a thing would have sent her reeling, blushing, giggling into her palm like a little girl. Now, she kissed him lightly on the lips and said, “Only if you’re good.”

His mouth fell open. She slid off his lap to stir the sauce, which had begun to simmer. Behind her, he said, “Whatever that was, I want more of it.”

* * *

Elsa left Kristoff to watch the food while she got ready. By the time she returned, he had chopped up an entire salad and was holding an emulsion blender she didn’t know she had into what looked like some kind of avocado dressing. She would have been irritated if she weren’t certain it would help balance out the meal, which was mostly carbs.

Anna arrived looking refreshed and more like herself. While they ate, the tension was palpable, despite Anna’s efforts to bring some levity to the table by offering funny anecdotes and pitching questions regarding current events. She probably would have succeeded if she hadn’t been so tired. Elsa’s nervousness made her quieter than usual, but she tried not to let it show, to bring back her confidence from earlier, and Kristoff seemed to want to leap out of his seat and get started right on top of the dining room table. 

When they were finished eating, Elsa asked, what she hoped was nonchalantly, “Is now a good time for a check-in?”

“Can we wait until I’ve quit my job?” Anna asked. “Then I’ll be like, queen of check-ins. I just want to have fun tonight.”

“Fun,” Kristoff said. His voice came out as strained as Elsa felt. “Fun is good.”

“Well then.” Elsa set her napkin on the table. “Let’s have fun.”

* * *

They played a game Anna called Look But Don’t Touch, where Kristoff had to watch from the armchair while Anna and Elsa made out on the couch and slowly took off each other’s clothes. They had a bet going on how long Kristoff could go without joining in. Anna bet they could get all the way undressed. Elsa, who had cheated a little by having teased Kristoff earlier, bet they wouldn’t even make it out of their underwear. Kristoff was certain he could hold out long enough that _ they’d _ join _ him. _The winner, of course, would get to come first.

Elsa was on top of Anna, unbuttoning her blouse and kissing down her chest, when Kristoff said, “Fuck,” and joined them on the couch. Although they managed a few articles of clothing, it became clear that the couch would not suit their needs, and eventually went to Elsa’s bedroom where she had a purchased a California king specifically for this purpose.

Having won the bet, all focus was on Elsa. Although she was nervous at first, she quickly grew to love the attention. It was so much different than when they paired off; there was so much to feel and do and touch. She came loudly, expecting as she usually did to feel sleepy afterward, but she knew it was only the beginning, and was eager to continue.

When Kristoff entered her, it didn’t hurt at all, in fact it felt better than she ever imagined it would, especially with Anna beside her, kissing her, asking how she felt and if she liked it and isn’t he so good? She came again with Anna’s fingers on her clit while Kristoff fucked her, by far the best and strongest orgasm she’d ever had.

They tried every position they could think of. With three people, there seemed to be an infinite number to choose from. Elsa was particularly fond of Kristoff fucking her from behind while she ate Anna out. Though she couldn’t form any concrete thoughts, an image of a strap-on came to mind and suddenly the possibilities seemed endless. 

While Elsa had to take a brief break, Kristoff remained insatiable. Elsa watched as he fucked his wife hard and fast, her leg pressed against her chest, their foreheads touching and eyes never leaving one another’s. She could see a sheen of sweat down Kristoff’s back, and he was breathing heavily, but otherwise he showed no signs of stopping. Anna came so hard she nearly screamed.

Elsa joined back in, riding Anna’s face while kissing Kristoff, which became another new favorite. By then she had lost track of how many times she and Anna had come, and there was some brief deliberation about when and where Kristoff would come, a decision that, because he made it apparent he preferred taking orders rather than giving him, Anna and Elsa determined on his behalf.

Elsa, having been on birth control since she was a teenager, wanted to feel him come inside her. Everything seemed to slow down. Finally attention not focused on the pleasure of one person. Somehow they had found a balance, a rhythm, the three of them moving in harmony. With Anna’s guidance, Elsa felt free to let go of herself completely, give her entire body over to them. When Kristoff came inside her, Elsa came too, gasping against Anna’s mouth. For the first time in her life, she felt satisfied.

* * *

Christmas was inching closer. Anna finally quit her job, but said her boss had somehow manipulated her into staying on long enough to train her replacement. She also got roped into helping conduct the interviews, in addition to her existing responsibilities. It would be February before she finally left. She’d begun sleeping on the couch of a coworker who lived in the city, but gave up when not one but two babies puked on her, and she stepped, barefooted, on a LEGO. Kristoff, upset, spent those nights with Elsa, keeping her awake at all hours talking about the unfairness of it all, and wishing Anna would stand up for herself and just leave already. Elsa, despite her insistence on not being a buffer, had to be the one to convince them to sleep in the same bed again, mostly so she could get a full night’s rest.

Anna was more stressed than Elsa, and even Kristoff, had ever seen her. The new relationship, which was ultimately a good thing, was still a change and therefore took adjustment energy she didn’t seem to have. When she finally found a replacement at work — an internal hire, thankfully — she claimed he was pretending to be an idiot because he was lazy (Kristoff pointed out that maybe he was just an idiot), and she was already regretting hiring him, but he was the best option in their pool of mediocre applicants. And on top of it all was the looming dread of no longer having a paycheck, health insurance, life insurance, or a matching 401(k). She compounded her own stress by spending all her free time researching IRAs to roll her 401(k) into, until Elsa pointed out she was probably allowed to keep her 401(k) invested in the company, and could roll it over when she had less on her plate. No matter how much Elsa and Kristoff assured Anna that everything would be okay, she could not be convinced, and interrupted every conversation with something like, "But what if Sven needs emergency dog surgery? How will we pay for it? We can't just let Sven die."

(Kristoff, Elsa knew, would sell his own kidney before he'd let something happen to Sven.)

The stress came to a head when Anna arrived home to find Elsa straddling Kristoff’s lap. They hadn’t intended to have sex that afternoon, but it had begun snowing hard and Kristoff sent everybody home early. Back at his place, they built a fire. While they were waiting for Anna to get home, or call to say she was getting a hotel room because of the weather, one thing led to another very quickly, and they hadn’t managed to even undress all the way before Elsa was lowering herself onto him, setting the rhythm for herself, taking her time. Kristoff was letting her, gleefully watching her every expression. She was getting used to being bossy with him, and she didn't think it was possible to watch him fall even more in love with her, but he did.

Then Anna came home and saw them, and just as Elsa was about to invite her to join, Anna gasped as if in shock and dropped her briefcase, then burst into tears and ran upstairs.

“Is she mad we’re having sex?” Kristoff asked. “Are we not allowed to be doing that?”

“I thought we were.”

They resituated their clothes and raced up the steps to Anna’s room, where she had her face buried in her pillow, sobbing. Elsa looked at Kristoff as if to say, _ Let me go first, _and he hung back, hovering in the doorway. Elsa sat at the edge of Anna’s bed and rubbed her back the way she liked that, when she was tired enough, made her fall asleep in an instant.

“I’m sorry,” Anna said, twisting her face up to look at Elsa, face wet and blotchy with tears. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, I —” Another sob cracked in her throat and Elsa shushed her and continued rubbing her back. She glanced up at Kristoff, who looked worried and confused, and as helpless as Elsa felt.

“It’s okay,” Elsa said. “Take your time.”

Finally Anna caught her breath. “I know. I know what we agreed to. But I just — I don’t know. I wasn’t ready for that, just then. To see you two without me.”

“Are we not supposed to —” Kristoff began.

“No, you are. It’s fine.”

“Then what’s wrong?” Elsa asked.

“I didn’t realize — I guess I thought we were in one relationship. The three of us. But we’re not. There are four relationships here, and each of us are only in three of them. I’m sorry. This sounds stupid.”

“It’s not stupid,” Elsa assured her. “You’re right.”

“I’m sorry I interrupted you. I’m not mad. I promise. Are you mad?”

“Of course not,” Elsa said. 

“How can we help?” Kristoff asked.

More sniffling. “Hold me?”

Elsa slipped in on one side of the bed, Kristoff the other, and together they held Anna until she fell asleep.

* * *

Elsa had never had much interest in Christmas, but now she had a reason to celebrate. Not wanting to intrude on their annual traditions, she told Anna and Kristoff that she had a prior obligation on Christmas Eve, knowing that was when they spent time with Anna’s parents. It wasn’t a lie, exactly, but she did make it sound more important than it was. Every year, she went and saw _ The Nutcracker, _ an event she’d usually attended with her parents, but the past few years had to go by herself. At the end, she was always pulled up on stage and thanked for her sponsorship of the ballet. She didn’t hate _ The Nutcracker, _but one begins to create false associations when one is unwittingly forced into the spotlight year after year. She tended to spend the entirety of the ballet wringing the program in her sweating hands.

Christmas morning, Anna and Kristoff went to Kristoff’s grandparents’ house for the afternoon, but after, would come to Elsa’s house for the rest of the evening. Elsa spent all morning nervously putting on the final touches. They arrived, pink-cheeked and happy, gifts and leftover food in their arms. Elsa hugged and kissed both of them. They set their things down and, at the same time, stared in surprise at the Christmas explosion in the living room.

“What the fuck,” Kristoff said.

“When did you have time to do all this?” Anna asked.

Elsa had put up a tree — rather, she’d hired someone to do it for her — and decorated the whole house, top to bottom. She’d even bought a record player and vinyls, and had stockings on the mantel embroidered with all their names.

Thankfully they had agreed weeks ago to only give each other one gift each, otherwise Elsa would have probably gone overboard. She figured there was plenty of time to ply them with gifts later. 

They ate leftovers around the kitchen island and drank wine while Anna and Kristoff eagerly relayed the events of the past two days, Anna’s family having far less drama to unveil than Kristoff’s. 

“She was right next to me when her water broke,” Anna said of that morning, mouth stuffed with cold ham. “Like one minute we’re watching Tim —”

“Tom,” Kristoff said. 

“Tom unwrap a weed whacker, and then like, everything is wet? Like the couch is just, soaked. And I asked Melanie, ‘Did you spill —’”

“And then we both realized at the same time what was going on,” Kristoff continued, “and we didn’t want to call attention to it or anything, so Anna, Erik, Ben, and me excuse ourselves and take Melanie with us —”

“But then Grandpabbi of all people was like, ‘Is she on the way?’”

“No,” Elsa said, aghast.

“Yes,” they both said.

“So we’re like,” Anna continued, “cat’s out of the bag now.”

“And Melanie just starts bawling,” Kristoff said.

“What did you do?” Elsa asked.

“What could we do?” Kristoff said, gesturing wildly with a carrot stick in his hand. “Pretend nothing is happening, that it isn’t our business, and move on.”

“His family is so weird,” Anna said.

“What happened with Melanie?” Elsa asked, picking at some soggy bruschetta. 

“She’s at the hospital still,” Kristoff said. “And the second Erik drove her and Ben out of there, the speculation ran wild.”

“So is the baby Ben’s or not?”

“We’ll never know,” Anna said, at the same time Kristoff said, “Has to be Ben’s.”

“If it is Ben’s, will she get, I don’t know, shunned?” Elsa asked.

Anna and Kristoff looked at each other as if they hadn’t considered that. “Why would she be shunned?”

“She had a baby out of wedlock with her step brother,” Elsa reminded them. “Allegedly.”

Kristoff whistled. “Well when you put it like that.”

“Remember when Ricky went to prison for involuntary manslaughter?” Anna asked Kristoff.

“Yeah,” Kristoff said. “That was definitely worse than this, and I was his secret Santa this year.”

“Speaking of,” Elsa said, standing up straighter. “Presents?”

They pulled out wrapped gifts from a bag and passed them over to Elsa. “You first,” Kristoff said. There was a small golden one on top of a larger red one. 

“They’re both from both of us,” Anna said.

Elsa opened the big one first and laughed as soon as she saw the red cross on it. “Thank you,” she said, flipping open the first aid kit, full of gauze and bandages and single-dose packets of fever reducers and antihistamines.

Next, Elsa opened the small golden box, and inside, found a shiny new key attached to a snowflake keychain.

“That’s to our house,” Kristoff explained. 

“He told me he never made you one, and I was like, what the hell? Why not?” Anna said. “So if you ever get locked out of your house again, you know where to go.”

It was hard not to cry, but she managed to choke back her tears by sliding an envelope toward them. “Here. It’s for both of you.”

Anna opened the envelope and pulled out what was inside — a check, made out to her and Kristoff, for fifty thousand dollars, an amount Elsa thought was modest, considering it wasn’t even Anna’s annual salary. She didn't see it as being any different than a gift card. Kristoff glanced over Anna’s shoulder to look.

“So you’ll be less anxious,” Elsa said, ignoring how the jovial air of the room had suddenly evaporated. “If you had some money set aside, you know. For emergencies.” When still they said nothing, both staring blankly at the check, she continued. “And so you can take time to recover. And the three of us can —”

“Elsa,” Kristoff said, not unkindly, but using the stern voice he had with his guys when they did something wrong. “You know we can’t accept this.”

“But —”

“I need a minute,” Anna said, and left. Elsa watched her walk down the hill, without a coat, to her own darkened house.

“Is she mad?” Elsa asked.

Kristoff had begun packing up the food. On the record player, Elvis was singing “Blue Christmas.” Elsa went to the window and watched the light turn on next door. She knew Anna would not be back.

“Yeah,” Kristoff said. “She’s mad.”

Elsa looked over at him. “Are you?”

He paused as if to search through his own feelings. “Yeah, I think I am. But I’ll get over it faster than she will.”

“I’m sorry. I just thought —” 

“I know.” Bags in hand, he leaned down and kissed her on the cheek. “Merry Christmas, Elsa.”


	10. Chapter 10

The good thing about nonprofits was that you could sink as much work as you wanted into them. There was always work to be done, and it was always welcome. Elsa spent the next few days keeping her distance from Anna and Kristoff, helping the Arendelle food pantry sort their holiday donations. It was tiring work which involved many spreadsheets and an aching back. She had done what she felt was a lot of volunteer work in her life, but nearly all of it came with a camera crew and a PR team. Her father had set up a foundation, Fjord Funding, in order to “give back,” and while it succeeded in its mission, to Elsa it never felt like enough to mitigate the damage her company had wrought. This work, however, was completely anonymous. Invisible work that even people who benefited from the pantry would never see. 

In the afternoon, a woman came in with her young daughter. Elsa was alone among the many shelves, checking expiration dates on several cans of peas. The woman had a canvas tote bag with the pantry’s logo on it and said, “Mind if I pick out a few things?”

Elsa wasn’t sure how it worked, exactly. No one had trained her to help people. She was sure there was some kind of check-out procedure. 

“Sure,” she said. “But if you could let me know what you take?” She held up her clipboard. “So I can mark it down.”

As the woman went up and down the aisles, the little girl wandered around and eventually ran into Elsa. Elsa said, "Hello," and knelt down in front of her. “How old are you?”

The little girl stared inquiringly at her own hand, and clumsily held up three fingers.

“Three years old. My goodness.”

She held up her arms. “This is what I got for Christmas.”

It took Elsa a moment to realize she meant her puffy coat, with mittens clasped to the sleeves. It was pink and reminded her of Anna.

“It’s beautiful. Is it warm?”

The girl nodded vigorously.

The woman came up to them and held out her tote bag. Elsa looked inside. She had only taken a few cans of vegetables, margarine, and a loaf of bread donated by the bakery.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t like anything else?” Elsa asked. 

“This’ll do us just fine.”

Elsa nodded to the girl. “Can she have candy?”

“Sure.”

So Elsa went around to where she knew there was a large container of suckers, and held it open for the girl. The girl took the decision very seriously, and pulled out a cherry one. 

“Can I have another?”

“For her brother,” the woman explained.

“Sure,” Elsa said, and the girl picked out a root beer flavored one.

The woman held her hand out for the little girl to take, and wished Elsa a happy new year as they left. They’d seemed happy, Elsa thought. Or at least, they seemed like they could have been happy, if they’d been made to struggle a little less. That was what it always came down to: people made do with what they had, and if that wasn’t enough, they stretched themselves too thin. Time, money, and energy were all limited resources that had to be carefully balanced in order to find the harmony that Elsa believed every person fundamentally deserved. But they did not live in a world where many people were allowed peace. Tipping the balance kept people powerless, people like Anna, who drained her time and energy to afford living where she wanted to live; people like Kristoff, who refused to give his home up to the wealthy summer migrants that destroyed his town. This woman and her daughter, coming all the way out to the food bank, potentially without a car, just for a meal’s worth of food. Not taking an ounce more than their share.

And there was Elsa, with all the time, energy, and money in the world. No one had the power to tip her balance. 

It was then she remembered — a lot of things had happened at once, but Weselton had no interest in the Fjord Foundation, so she’d kept it. Really it was just an investment account, and if no one was there to manage it, it just sat there accruing interest, while her wealth manager cut the checks for their annual donations. It was nearly automated. 

Quickly she finished up her inventory, bid goodbye to the other volunteer on duty, and signed out. She hadn’t even made it home before she began making phone calls, seeing if her plan was viable. It was difficult, given that most finance workers were out of the office this time of year. Elsa knew that she could get anyone to pick up the phone, though, a power she did not often abuse, but today she did. The people who could help her enact her ideas all answered, as she knew they would, and promised they would get the ball rolling.

Later that night, paperwork in hand, she dashed next door and was about to let herself in when she realized Kristoff was probably still mad at her, and knocked instead. Anna still wasn’t home from work, but she would be any minute. He opened the door and frowned at her, particularly the manila folder she was clutching to her chest. “Hey?”

“Can I come in?”

He stepped aside and she entered, and didn’t want to be so bold as to take off her shoes and coat, when it was clear Kristoff was wary of her presence. Sven was the only one thrilled to see her, and wagged his tail so hard his butt wiggled with it. She knelt down and let Sven lick her face, aware that Kristoff was watching her, conflicted. She could tell he wanted to hug her and kiss her and ask how her day had been, as eager and happy to see her as Sven, but held himself back. 

“I’m sorry,” she offered, standing and looking him in the eye. “I love you so much, and I just want you to be happy.”

He looked down at his feet. They were still in the foyer, and she wondered if he would invite her in, or if they’d have to stand here waiting for Anna to come home. “I know you do.”

“What I did was tactless and I understand why you’re upset. But — I have a solution. A real one. And it will solve all of our problems.”

He looked hopeful. “Really?” Wary again. “One that doesn’t involve just giving us a bunch of cash?”

“Yes.”

“Well okay then.”

She heard the crunch of gravel in the driveway. A moment later, Anna came in, and paused when she saw Elsa. Like Kristoff, happy surprise flickered across her face before it fell into disdain. “Hey,” she said, slipping off her coat. “Muffin,” she added, grumpily.

“Hi, cheesecake.”

“She says she has a solution to all of our problems,” Kristoff said.

“Oh?”

“I know you’re tired and hungry,” Elsa began, “but could we go over this? And then I’ll leave you alone.”

Anna looked to Kristoff, who gave her something of a pleading look, and she said, “Okay, sure.”

They sat at the dining table and Elsa tried to organize her thoughts. The kitchen smelled like chicken and dumplings and she realized she’d forgotten to eat today, but it felt rude to ask if she could stay for dinner. One thing at a time, though. First, she slid the folder over. 

Anna opened it. “'The Fjord Foundation,'” she read, Kristoff looking over her shoulder. “What’s that?”

“It’s my non-profit,” Elsa said. “Which is currently somewhat dormant. Or at least, not fulfilling its potential.”

“Okay?” Anna said, skimming the topmost document, which spelled out very dryly the legalese surrounding the work of the foundation. 

“But it’s mine,” Elsa continued. “Weselton didn’t want it. However —” She reached out and flipped a few pages. “His lawyers missed something. Fjord Lumber is still the primary sponsor of the foundation, so it’s still receiving donations.”

“Nice,” Kristoff said.

“I don’t think Weselton has noticed, and if he ever does, disengaging from the foundation would be a PR nightmare. It’s a major oversight on his part. Right now, it’s not doing much, but it could be.”

Anna nodded. “Okay, and?”

“And, to make it into something, I’d need help.”

Kristoff looked like he might fly out of his seat with joy, but Anna hadn’t grasped what Elsa was posing. Elsa reached across the table and flipped to the next page, this one a contract that her lawyer had drafted up for her.

“I’d like you to help me manage the Fjord Foundation.”

“So I’d be working for you?” Anna asked skeptically.

“We’d be partners.”

“Oh.”

“We’d both get equal say in the purpose and duties of the foundation. And, if you wanted, you could be an employee of the foundation so you could receive a paycheck. Of course, you’d get to decide the amount of that paycheck, but I trust you would not abuse that authority.”

“What would we — I mean, what cause are we helping?”

“Property,” Elsa said. “I thought we could start by buying some foreclosed houses, and hiring Kristoff to renovate them, then donate them to families in need.”

“Yes,” Kristoff said. “That is a thing I want to do.”

“We can partner with the food pantry, too, and see if we can boost their existing resources. Maybe buy them a shuttle. Build an extension to the building. Maybe new computers to help automate their processes.”

“We could help people,” Anna said, seemingly to herself, and Elsa could see the slow burn of excitement across her face. “We could help Arendelle.”

“It’s going to take a while to get going. There are a lot of decisions to make, and each decision needs vetted and implemented by a lawyer. These things move pretty slowly —”

“But the money will never run out?” Anna asked.

“As long as there are trees on earth, the money will not run out.” Unless, of course, Weselton cut ties with the foundation, but he was too much of a coward for that, and the legal battle would be a bloodbath. Moreover, Elsa planned to shift a significant portion of her personal wealth to the foundation, whatever it took to make sure their work could continue. Even with a massive stock market crash, her wealth would not be touched. Her funds were too carefully allocated. 

“And I’d get to decide, what?” Anna asked.

“Everything. We can rebuild the foundation to do whatever work we want it to do.”

“How many hours a week?”

“However many you wanted.”

“Where would I work?”

“You could set up an office in one of my spare rooms if you’d like. Or you could work here. It can all be done remotely.”

“I have an idea,” Kristoff offered. They looked at him. He spoke his next words in a rush, thinking, apparently, on an entirely different track than either of them. “Why can’t next door be the Fjord Foundation offices and maybe Elsa could move in here?” Leave it to Kristoff to prioritize the domestic implications of their agreement.

Elsa enjoyed the renovations she'd made to her house, but it did conjure a kind of office-like sterility, and she was here more often than there anyway. She liked the idea, but wouldn’t say so until she could gauge Anna’s reaction.

“Would you want that?” Anna asked, and the hopefulness in her face confirmed her surety.

“I would,” Elsa said. She’d keep her bedroom in the other house, of course, because sometimes she did need time alone, but she liked the idea of not walking up the hill at night any longer. Going to bed with the two of them. Eating breakfast together each morning.

Kristoff slapped his hand on the table. “Great. Do or die time, Anna. What do you think?” 

Elsa was grateful for Kristoff’s all-or-nothing attitude which prevented him from thinking through consequences before making risky decisions like this. He saw opportunities, and he went for them. 

Anna, however, was more careful. She turned page after page, which outlined her benefits package, far better than Elsa knew she had at the pharmaceutical company, or would find at any other job. 

Finally, she closed the folder and leaned back. “What’s the catch? There has to be a catch.”

Elsa traded worried looks with Kristoff. “I thought that was obvious,” Elsa said. “It’ll be a lot of work. There’s a steep learning curve for both of us. We’ll have to hire advocacy groups and consultants to train us in non-profit work. There’s miles of red tape to wade through. It’ll be years before we see the fruits of our work, and even then, we might not think we’re doing much at all. We’ll spend most of our time kissing asses and networking. It’ll be frustrating, grueling, thankless work. Years of it. Decades, maybe.”

Elsa thought that spelling out all the downsides would deter Anna, but her face only lit up more with the prospect of such a challenge. She clicked her pen and opened the folder. “Okay, I’m in,” she said, and signed on the dotted line.

* * *

**18 months later**

Elsa’s phone vibrated. It was a calendar invite sent by Anna for later that afternoon. She’d been acting strange lately, blocking off private time on her calendar and leaving for a few hours at a time. When Elsa asked Kristoff where she’d gone, he said he didn’t know. 

Things were finally balanced. While Elsa worked with lawyers on the foundation those first few months, Anna had rested. Her last day at her job was Valentine’s Day. When she came home that night, she couldn’t tell if she was upset or thrilled, but by the end of the evening, after a big meal and a lengthy lovemaking session, she seemed happy. She took the next several weeks off, two of which were spent on a cruise in which, after much discussion and persuasion, they'd let Elsa pay for the best of everything. Kristoff got badly sunburned and Anna woke up with a hangover every morning, but they had an amazing time.

Even though Anna swore she would spend a few months recovering from her burnout, she grew bored quickly, and began asking questions here and there about the foundation. Elsa gave her a couple things to do, and then she pretty much took over, and everything had been running smoothly ever since.

Elsa thought she’d already been in love with Anna, but as the weight of her working life fell off her shoulders, Elsa fell even harder. Anna rode a bicycle around the living room to think. She slid down the bannister stairs rather than walking. She talked almost every minute of every day. She was the most competent and compassionate person Elsa had ever met. There was no challenge too great, no problem too complicated. To her, everything was a puzzle. Everything had a solution.

Kristoff had torn down Elsa’s office wall and they turned it into a conference room. They’d also built a library, where Elsa and Anna spent a not-insignificant amount of time. They hosted networking events in the house, which seemed to impress everyone who entered, and soon Kristoff’s own business took off, and he began leaning on Elsa’s team for management resources. He'd developed an apprenticeship program for young people in Arendelle who maybe weren’t interested in college and were therefore leaning heavily toward the military. Erik, who was a natural-born salesman, headed the program, and slyly plucked interested candidates right out of military recruitment offices. Under Kristoff, they were trained well and compensated fairly, with full benefits packages. 

Anna was impressed by Kristoff’s change in attitude and work ethic, finally motivated in a way she had never seen him, and Elsa was thrilled to watch them repair their relationship and, in some ways, fall in love all over again. 

Anna's brief meltdown about finding Kristoff and Elsa together was a stress-based anomaly, and it didn't happen again. The three of them continued having check-ins every few weeks, and while Kristoff still struggled to express his feelings and Anna still treated everything like business negotiations and Elsa was still glaringly new at all this, they made it work. They found a balance.

A few months ago, Anna told them that she would no longer be taking her birth control. Elsa thought Kristoff would be happier about the announcement, but only seemed benignly supportive as if Anna had announced she was going to begin taking supplements. Apparently he hadn’t considered the implications of her statement, until two days later, when he finally pieced it together. He’d been holding a spoon which he promptly dropped, said, “Oh, my god,” and started crying.

That afternoon, Elsa took a seat at the conference table. Kristoff was already there, looking grouchily at his new iPhone, which he struggled with daily. He had drywall flakes all over his hair and his hands were covered in primer. Sometimes it shocked her, how in love with both of them she still was. From everything she’d ever read, she thought it would fade, but every day her love for them only seemed to grow.

“Do you know what this is about?” Elsa asked.

“Nope,” he said. She had an idea, but didn’t want to say it out loud in case she was wrong. Knowing Anna, it could be about anything from their five-year projected outlook, to next week’s meal plan. But if she was right — it would sprout an entire crop of questions for which Elsa did not have the answers.

Anna came in a moment later, exactly on time as always. “Good afternoon, colleagues.” She shut the door behind her and took a seat at the head of the table.

“I wish you would stop calling us that,” Kristoff said.

“I’ve invited you here today because I have good news.”

Elsa’s stomach did a flip. Kristoff was tipping his chair back, staring out at the ocean, thinking, probably, about his sourdough starter.

“We,” Anna began, “are having a baby.”

Kristoff sat up too quickly, lost his balance, and his chair fell back. 

Elsa stood to make sure he was okay, but Kristoff popped up, wide-eyed, and said, “Are you serious? Are you being seriously serious right now?”

“The serious-est,” Anna said, and Kristoff went over and swept her into his arms.  He peppered kisses all across her face, saying “I love you” over and over. 

Elsa should have been happy. She wanted to be happy. But she couldn’t help thinking they would want to break up with her now, so they could have a more conventional family, and live out the lives they’ve always wanted.

“What’s wrong?” Anna asked amid Kristoff's continued kisses. She and Elsa seemed to have grown something of a telepathic link, insofar that they always seemed to know what the other was feeling.

“Nothing,” Elsa said. A lump rose in her throat. “I’m happy for you.”

Kristoff and Anna gave each other a look.

“We said we wouldn’t hide things from each other,” Anna said. “Spit it out.”

“I just. I figure, this is the end for us.”

“The three of us made this baby,” Anna said. “They’re yours, too.”

“How is that going to work?”

Kristoff pointed to each of them. “Mom, mom, dad. Easy.”

It couldn’t be that easy. “What will they tell people in school? Your families don’t even know about me yet.”

“That’s not a problem we need to solve right now,” Anna said. “The point is, you’re a parent of this child. If you want to be, that is."

"Of course I want to be," Elsa admitted, something hopeful flourishing inside her like a million roses blooming at once.

"Then you are," Anna said, and Elsa knew, just like that, the issue was settled. 

“Oh god,” Kristoff said, some realization dawning on him. “I have to go baby-proof the house. Meeting adjourned?” 

“Meeting adjourned,” Anna said.

He pressed a kiss to her lips. “Love you.” On his way out, he kissed Elsa too. “Love you too,” he added, and raced out the door as if the baby would arrive any minute.

“Come on, snickerdoodle,” Anna said, holding out her hand. “This craving thing is real. Let’s go to the bakery.”

Elsa took Anna’s hand in her own. Outside, a dozen families were laid out on the beach, children playing in the calm, warm ocean. Elsa's inbox were full of unanswered emails, and she had probably missed several calls during their meeting. But at the moment, none of it mattered. The work would always be there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for sticking with this fic! And big thanks to aeriallon for beta. 
> 
> If you enjoyed this fic, you can [reblog the photoset](https://bettsfic.tumblr.com/post/189555345862/renovations-frozen-annaelsakristoff-modern).


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